My Journal

Ireland Before

2009-04-26T06:34:00.005-06:00

Ellen is off to Ireland. Now what does that have to do with me? Nothing. I am staying back here, with the dogs. She will be touring a whole other country we will be home wondering what she's up to. She will be seeing the sights and we will be doing the same ol same old nothing. Am I jealous? Yeah I guess I am but don't tell her. What bothers me most is that she will be using up all her holiday time and I will have lots left and no one to go with.

But its a mother daughters trip. She is going with her mom and her sisters, and its been in the planning stages for years. It was just to be her mother and sister years ago but just before they booked it my father in law got sick and it was put off. Then ny sister in law go married and moved to Winnipeg (not necessarily in that order), And the trip got put off. But every once in a while talk of it would rise like Brigadoon out of the mist and there would be talk.

Well now the talk has come to fruition. The contingent is expanded to Mom and all her daughters and they leave on Tuesday. Fifteen days and a bus tour of Magical Ireland. Ellen is all decked out with new luggage and a new digital camera and all but packed. That will be done by this evening. Then its off to the emerald isle. Well almost first a flight to TO then Heathrow then Dublin and a good nights rest. Then the tour and fun.

The Gooding girls are doing a special side trip next Sunday to meet Barber relatives. Mom's family is from a small pace near Sligo. There are still family back there and through the magic of the Internet Donna has arranged a Family Reunion of sorts. That is to take place next Sunday at the Church in Duncliffe.
Beyond that they have a whole long list of sightseeing tours etc.. etc..

I had one rule for the trip, It has to do with Ellen's sister Barbara. Barbara is a great kid don't get me wrong but she will call up to say hi and you will be on the phone for an hour and will not have said three words in sequence, To say she has the gift of the gab is to put it mildly. Its not a bad thing. She offsets Ellen who usually sits back and lets the others do the talking. At any rate my one rule for the trip is that under no circumstances do they let Barbara kiss the Blanrey stone. I don't know what could happen. Nothing probably like attaching a charger to a gully charged battery. Then again we should not risk a national Irish treasure should we. Maybe it would give that old rock a rechage so it can keep going another thousand years!

Other than thatthey should have all the fun and good times you can pack into two weeks in an Irish tour bus.

As for me and my girls, I think the Chicken delivery man will know where our house is quite well by the time Ellen is back!

Sitting here all alone with the dogs...
Randy

Still Here

2009-02-06T19:17:00.006-07:00

As Mark Twain said " The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated!" Yes its been a while and for that I apologize.

This is just a quick note to say I am still here I just have not had too much to say or time to say it. Sorry. Somebody out there is thinking of that line from Dances with Wolves where the Mule skinner and Dunbar come upon an arrow riddled skeleton on the prairie and the Mule skinner says "Somebody back east is wonderin' why don't he write?" Well I ain't dead yet. It is just that Ive been busy at one thing and another. I work on computers all day and I don't want to see them when I get home unless I have to. And this blog is not an I have to.

On the home front no great shakes. Unless you count Belle getting attached by a Pit Bull great (we certainly shook). Last Monday we were out for a walk around the block and as we passed a house a Pit bull jumped an 8 foot fence and roared across the yard and grabbed her. I was able to get her away from it twice before the owners got off their butts and got it into the house. Belle was bitten on the ear and bruised on the neck and shoulders. I was just shook up (its a scary thing to have a dog like that coming at you.) I found her ear wound when I got home so I took her into the vet emergency to get her completely checked out. Two hours and 200 dollars later she was home not a whole lot worse for wear. I reported the incident and the owners were fined. They took the dog out of the city. I have to stop by to get them to pay my vet bill. The animal control officer said I may want to wait as they were quite upset. Poor dears. If I get any grief from them I will take them to small claims court. So they will have a choice of paying me now or paying me later.

Other than that its the same old same old. And as the Monty Python line from "the Holy Grail" goes "I'm not dead yet!"

Guitar Lessons for the Fun of it

2008-10-28T10:31:00.006-06:00

Long time no see. But that is the fall, too little time too much to do. And since I did not have enough on my plate I signed up for guitar lessons. Just half an hour a week with travel that equates to about an hour every Wednesday night. That and at least a half an hour a day practicing what I learned. The half hour is what I try to put in until I can't feel the tips of my fingers or move my shoulder. Which is God's way of telling me he has heard enough noise for one day. Funny how things change when I was in the band in school it was a chore to practice now I put in as much time as I can muster until the old joints ache, because it is "fun".

My teacher is a young man, a kid really, in his very early 20's who is remarkably polite to the old geezer. In the first few lessons we have been going through a lot of theory. He has been teaching me and in some cases reminding me of things I had known many years ago. High school band is pretty much a dim memory but a lot of the theory came back when I started talking to Zairial.

He has a little bit of a mean streak though. He started off with Barre Chords. That for people not familiar is a chord shape that is made by barring all six strings with one finger. And it takes a fair bit of practice and strength in the finger to produce results. So for the first week or so I got very little music and a whole new world of pain out of my guitar. But I stuck it out and little by little the pain was replaced by music. He later told me it usually takes a student three or four weeks to get the hang of barre chords but the benefit is that they are very systematic and logical unlike the other method called CAGED or open chords. So that is what I have been up to for the past 4 weeks.

Last week he started to show me how to finger pick. I had a book but had not started to work from it. But now I know 3 different patterns and I have even started to pick out a few songs. And I must be doing something right because Ellen said that one even sounded like it was supposed to. She said "Is that Shenandoah?" which it was and a total surprise to me. I have no idea what the tune is supposed to sound like and the patterns I was picking out were not the melody so if she can recognize it I must be doing something right.

Finger picking has the added benefit of making your fingers on your right had sore. That as I understand it is to balance out the blisters and or calluses on the left hand. In finger picking you play three stings with the thumb and the other three strings with the index middle and ring fingers. It sounds very nice and more musical to my ear than strumming. But as with everything about the guitar it hurts for the first while. I have also read on the Internet that you need longer finger nails but the steel strings will break them and tear them up. Something else to look forward to.

But I think that I can get even. The whole point of this hobby is so that at some point I will be able to sing around the camp fire. That is when I get even. All the pain and soreness that I have been putting up with to learn the guitar will be nothing compared to what my audiences will have to put up with when I sing. Think of the worst contestant on American Idol and multiply it say tenfold. That is what I'll sound like. Add to that the fact that I can't remember lyrics and there you have it. My revenge. And the best part is that I sound great in my own mind so it won't bother me in the least!

Still banging away on the old axe...

Randy

Indian Summer

2008-09-08T17:49:00.003-06:00

Well summer is nearly over for another year. We had Ellen's aunt Norma out to our trailer for the weekend just to get her out of town for a change of pace. The weather did not really cooperate but I think she had a good time anyway. Mostly we played board games. But we did get out and see the country side a bit. We took her down to the Pearson Berry farm for a Saskatoon pie and jar of black current syrup.

And now we are getting ready for fall and there are still nearly two weeks of summer left. Like Aunt Norma I hope we get an Indian summer. OOPS! I said Indian Summer how un PC of me. Did you know that kids today don't know what Indian summer is. Apparently it is a derogatory expression, and here I thought it referred to that warm few weeks after the first cold snap of fall. I don't know why people call it Indian summer but I suspect that there is something in the lore that may not be too savory. We never learned it in school all we knew was the name. And because some people are offended that expression is gone too.

What will it be next? Dutch Ovens? For those of you who do not know a dutch oven is a roasting pot and not an oven at all. From the days when every thing Dutch was thought to be second rate in old New England. But who knew it was politically incorrect. I am sure that if I studied it a bit I could find any number of politically incorrect expressions that everyone uses everyday. And we better use them archaic and quaint though they might be. Before they go the way of Indian Summer,

Just sitting here hoping for that-warm-spell-that-comes-after-the-first-cold-snap-of-fall TWSTCATFCSOF for short, Indian Summer for those politically incorrect types in the crowd.

Randy

I might be a redneck

2008-08-21T15:35:00.005-06:00

If your dog and your wallet are both on a chain... you might be a redneck.

If you both use the tree at the end of the block when you walk your dog... you might be a red neck.

I have heard a great many redneck jokes thanks mostly to Mr Jeff Foxworthy but here's a new one

If you buy your wife lingerie at the bait shop... you might be a redneck.

Well it was at the marina and it was a nightshirt not lingerie but you get the idea.

While on vacation I went to the Sunset Bay marina to pick up fishing licences, a bit of tackle and gas for the boat. I did not need bait but I bet they had it. And in a side room in the marina store was a little shop called Jammyz (or something like that). And they sold all sorts of t shirt type nighties and bags and PJ's. So the wife and I went browsing.

She needed a new nightshirt anyway. Her old one is getting pretty thin is spots and it is very old. So we had a poke around and found her one that had comic dogs all over it with the slogan "Let Sleeping dogs lie." (The comic dogs relaxing in beach attire with the slogan "Dogs In Heat" was funnier but too mean since the girls are spayed.) So I bought it for her. (It even has a beagle that looks like Dixie on it.) Lingerie, sort of, at the Bait shop, sort of. So I might be a red neck, sort of.

Like I said If you buy your wife lingerie at the bait shop... you might be a redneck.

Feel free to use that one Jeff.

Randy

Flying the Flag

2008-07-02T12:40:00.010-06:00

It was Canada day yesterday. A time for all patriotic Canadians to fly their flag. And that is just what we did. It took me three days to do it but I got her done. How hard can it be? not real hard unless you want to go a little bit over board like I did.

You see a year ago I bought a flag because it was Canada Day and I like flags (although I think Canada's flag is a little boring compared to some) and I like it when people fly flags. So I bought a flag and it came with a 4 foot pole and a bracket to allow you to mount it on a building. Well last year at this time I had just finished my skirting on the old trailer and I mounted the flag on that. Then I up and sold the old trailer and had to take my flag down. There was no place to mount the bracket on the new trailer or on the deck as I did not want to try to drill holes in everything. So after careful consideration I decided to mount it on the deck railing. That part was easy the how to burned out a few more brain cells. All I had to do was mount a board on the railing attache the bracket and I was in business.

Easier said than done. I devised several methods of mounting a backer board. All very complicated and none of them that would not mark up the railing. I was concerned that If the railing was all full of holes it would detract from the resale value. Yeah like I'm going to sell the place! It will be in my will. So Ellen will get it but that is another issue. Anyway I still wanted to find a way to mount it without scaring the aluminum railing. Also the pickets in the rail are solid aluminum and more than not wanting to mar them I knew they would be the devil to work with. So I thought about it off an on for a while since last September. And I came up with a solution this weekend. Hose clamps.

I decided that if I attached hose clamps to the backer board and then clamped them to the uprights I would be able to accomplish my goal. But I ran into a problem. The spindles are only 3/4 of an inch or so and a clamp small enough to go on them was nigh impossible to work with. First off you can't open it completely then put it back together because the bend is too tight to get the screw started again. Trust me. I have the cuts and blood stains to prove it. So I had to go with a clamp that was really too big for the job. Now how do you tighten it so that it holds snugly. the Answer was Hose. If I put a small piece of hose around the spindle where I wanted to attach it I could clamp the hose to the spindle and voila. But can you imagine they don't sell short lengths of rubber hose? At least in Sundre they don't. They will sell you a 25 foot garden hose that you can cut down but that was pretty wasteful. So I looked around the hardware store.

Hardware stores are great places to browse. They have all manner of wonderful things. Most of them have no relevance to this story. But it was still fun to browse. What I found in my search was rubber strapping that is used to repair rubber hose. That was the solution to my problem. I wrapped the spindlles in the rubber strappping. I made the wrap large enough to accomodate the large clamps and that did the trick. With four clamps attahce to the backer board I clamped the backer to the rail and that did the job.

Oh yeah the backer was 3 foot by 10 inches. Now if you are thinking that is an awful lot of space to be hanging a Flag bracket on you're right. I could have got by with a piece about 10 by 10 but where's the fun in that. Here is what I came up with!

And here are a few more details on how I did it. Now my sign is completely removeable and won't mar the railing spindles.

Oh yes the name, well we are Beagle people and it just seemed appropriate. And Belle and Dixie like it just fine.

Relaxing on my finally finished deck....

Randy

Jim's Curse

2008-06-16T07:56:00.011-06:00

My friend, and I use the term loosely sometimes, tried to put the whammy on the weather this weekend. When I told him I had a construction project to do, Jim says "It's gonna rain all day every day this weekend, where ever you go!" Thanks Jim just what I needed. A curse to rile up the weather gods. Fortunately there were no gypsy relatives in his background so he couldn't put a curse on anything. He was dead wrong. The weather for a change was wonderful. And I was able to finish the skirting as you shall see.

Last time I estimated $100 in supplies well it only took $80. So I am already ahead by twenty bucks. I figured a two day job and it came in one. The step problem that has been bugging me in the back of my mind since the deck went in last fall worked out perfectly once I determined what I had to do. And I was able to use a lot of the scrap left over from the trailer skirting so I had lots of materiel left over which I was able to give to a friend for his project. (He offered to buy it but since it was given to me by the guy that sold me the original package with the trailer I thought it would only be fair to give it free to the next guy who needed it. )

So the weather made me nervous all the way out. As we left town Jim's curse was firing on all 8 cylinders. The sky turned black then wet. If someone passed you you could not see. Even with the wipers on full speed you could not see very well. And on the QE2 speedway aka Highway 2 that did not phase the morons a bit. They still were passing everything in sight. And don't bother putting your lights on just stay invisible in the spray and mess. Then all of a sudden the rain stopped. Bye bye curse.

There were pools of water everywhere and not a thing was dry but it wasn't raining anymore when we got to Sundre. But where I had to work was drying quickly. as it was getting the evening sun. So we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best for Saturday. Then in the middle of the night the rain started again. It woke me up and I figured Jim had struck again. So I rolled over and went back to sleep. What else could I do?

Saturday dawned cloudy. Thanks Jim. We walked the dogs and made breakfast. It was wet everywhere but the rain held off. By 8:30 blue sky was poking through the clouds. The hardware opened at 8:00 but it was almost nine when it looked like it might be a good day. By the time we were back at 9:30 it was nice enough to get started. I had the base in by noon. As I was taking the last piece down the dogs escaped from the deck. Maybe Jim's curse was back.

The weather was co-operating but now I had to try to chase down 2 beagles on a "Thelma and Louise" weekend. In a fenced yard they will come when called. In the great outdoors Ha! They were gone and as far as I could tell they were coyote bait. We looked for them called them but nothing. So we went back to work hoping they would find their way home on their own. They never got too far away because every so often they would get the scent of some poor bush denizen and they would start to howl. When we heard them we would stop what we were doing and try to find them to call them home. When they heard us they would quiet down. When they saw us they would grin and wag their tails good bye.

So we would go back to work. They would go back to "huntin' an' howl'n". As long as we could hear them they had a chance of coming back. And about 4 hours later Belle came dragging back in soaking wet and a it turned out a little worse for wear. An hour or so after that Dixie came home as it is no fun chasing yourself around the woods. That apparently is a game for two. Belle did something to her hind leg. It was very tender and she would not let anyone touch her at first. It was not bleeding or cut so it must a have been a sprain or a fall. All she wanted to do was sleep so we let her be. Just because she was hurt we still took both of them for their regular walks which on Saturday night was probably punishment enough.

We finished the skirting on Saturday night about 8:00. And the rain stayed away all day. It rained on the hunters which probably cut the run short, and there were thunderstorms in the area which I thought might have scared them away permanently (but didn't). So Jim's curse did not work. And when the job was done the sun came out and stayed. Everyone was home. Safe if not sore. And it was a good weekend after that.

Here is a shot of the guys taking down the tree last week.

And the finished product all skirted in,

And finally the view from the inside...

Now where did I put the mint julep mix....

Randy

Singin' in the Rain

2008-06-09T11:22:00.004-06:00

Rain rain go away come again some other day.

It was wet again this weekend. Real wet. Noah wet. I think I saw animals lining up two by two. Ducks were looking for umbrellas. You get the picture. But my deck was dry! We had rain off and on for most of the day Saturday and until about 10:00 am Sunday. The fellow who put up my deck roof was wondering how the noise was. Frankly Art, the only thing that woke me up was the furnace kicking in through the night. The rain on the deck roof was not a problem.

But it can stop now. Or at least by the weekend. I have to fin sh skirting in the deck so that I don't get critters living under it. I have most everything I need except for the front trim and a few 2X6 maybe about a hundred dollars worth of material. There was one item that had me scratching my head. How do you skirt around the steps. Art's partner said he closed them in all around but that seemed a little fussy. So after wandering around the park I saw a solution that will be perfect. I will add a piece to the front rail of the deck so that I can go under the steps to skirt them. The extra piece will let me mount the shirting under the steps without having to remove them. It has the added benefit of letting me use small pieces of scrap skirting that would have other wise wound up in the land fill. Gee Green and efficient how lucky can you get. I'm sure this is all as clear as muddy water so when I do it I will take some pictures.

The girls don't like the deck particularly it is sort of a jail for them but since they can't be let loose it is better than being cooped up inside all day. I can live with the occasional accident on the deck better than on the carpet.

And what is on the agenda after the deck. Well it looks like a small shed for tools and junk storage. I have a storage box but it has a split roof and it leaks no too clever in retrospect. So its time to replace that. Maybe I will clean it up and use it for fire wood storage. It will keep that dry enough. And I will have a whole tree to stow away in there for a while.

I did not get to cutting it up this weekend. Too wet. I would have been dry I suppose because I would have been using my hand saw, a Swede Saw my Father In Law would have called it or I guess since my father calls a shovel a Mexican Back Hoe this would be a Mexican Chain Saw. In either case it is a lot of hand work. We will see about it next week.

In the mean time I have some shopping to do and some set up. And a little more clean up, and d a little more planning, and some figuring...

Waiting for the sun to come out and dry up the place...

Randy

The Deck

2008-06-02T13:17:00.005-06:00

There is a bit on you tube and elsewhere where Jeff Foxworthy, Drew Carey and others are sitting around comparing decks and all the innuendo that comes with it. It believe it is a skit from Blue Collar TV. Well I'm going to be getting into decks for a minute too. We have a roof on ours at our RV lot as of about 5 o'clock last night. And it was a good job. Art and Brian two older renovators from the campground are doing them just to keep their hand in but not to have too much work. They are semi-retired or so they say but they worked all weekend on mine and another project. If that's retirement I'll keep working.

Anyway they got 'er done. Beat the rain shower by about an hour. But there was a casualty. We lost a tree in the process. Had to take it down because it was crowding the roof. OK more than crowding by about 6 inches which was just about the thickness of the tree at the bottom. So down it came. Next weekend or when ever the sun comes back I will cut it up into firewood.

I was lucky that it was the small tree I could have been up against a big one. If we had had to go any further the next tree is a good foot across at the bottom and 70 or 80 feet tall. I think we may have had to build around that. But we didn't have to so we were lucky.

What a difference a deck made to the trailer and what a difference the roof made to the deck. It near doubles our living space. And the dogs can go outside rain or shine. That would be a perk for us but not probably not for the girls. Dixie, the summer dog, is partial to the creature comforts. But she did not mind the deck yesterday after the construction noise stopped. Dixie was beside herself with the noise form the drilling and power tools. She did not know where to hide when the fellows were using the hole saw to install the downspouts. If she could have gotten into the wall she would have as it was she was trying to make herself disappear into a corner every time they drove a screw home. The whole deck roof amplified the sound and believe me it was not her cup of tea. Belle, the winter dog, on the other hand napped through it all except when it was very loud. The noise was an inconvenience for Belle.

So in just over a day and a half we went from a plain deck to a roofed in outdoor living room it was a fantastic transformation that I should have done years ago, But I used to have an awning and it was sort of the same but not quite. The new trailer didn't so I kind of missed it. I like the idea that you could put it up and down but I wont miss the 2 am roll ups when the wind started up Or rolling and unrolling it until it was stowed properly. Nah on second thought aluminum is better. If I need sun I can move my chair off the deck.

It is calling for rain this weekend and part of me hopes that it will. I'm looking forward to sitting and listening to the sound of rain on the roof, even a tin one.

On the edge of our seat waiting for the weekend...

Randy

Eau De Wet Dog

2008-05-26T10:31:00.004-06:00

The girls are sporting a new fragrance this week. Eau De Wet Dog. It is raining again just like it has been for week now. And Belle and Dixie have to go out so they get wet. And voila Eau de Wet Dog. That lovely aroma that permeates everything. And put a curb to our trailer visit this weekend. We went up but came right back again after we completed our errands for the day. A new trailer should not smell like an old wet dog this soon. And the wet makes them rowdy and I'm sure that despite their being good last week a set or two of muddy wet feet would almost certainly wind up on the new couch. So we did not stay and the girls did not get to come into the trailer.

60 millimeters of rain is what we got over the past week about 3 or 4 inches for the non metrics in the crowd. When it gets warm every thing is going to pop. I think I'll have a 20 minute window to mow my lawn before I need a swather. Maybe we will be lucky this year and the rain and snow pack melt will not coincide and maybe we wont have flooding any worse than we already have. High River has high water again for the umpteenth time in as many years it seems. The Elbow in town is threatening the poor folk in Rideau. Those large estates are getting smaller as the Elbow river washes them down to the Bow and on to Medicine Hat.

But we need the rain. Make that needed the rain. But enough is enough. It can stop any time. The rain barrel is full the apple trees in my yard are well watered as are the Saskatoons. And yes Belle has been over inspecting the blossoms on them too. Judging by the blooms it will be a good year for grazing if they don't get washed off.

A friend at work here lucked out on the rain though. He sodded his yard on the long weekend. Got all his new sod in and just as he was finishing the rain started and has not stopped. It was just exactly what he needed. When it dries up he can let his little ones out on new grass. And he didn't even have to drag a hose around. What's more rain is better for the new grass than the treated city water. He was the only guy smiling at the forecast around here. Well even he is not smiling any more. Seems he can't let the little ones out of the house in the rain and they are going stir crazy. Not a problem in our house, our problem is Eau de Wet Dog.

Just sitting here with the Glade...

Randy

Victoria Day Again

2008-05-21T17:11:00.003-06:00

It was Victoria Day weekend again last weekend and once again the rowdies proved that God made more horses asses than he made horses. And first among them were the off roaders on their ATVs. According to the paper some 5000 people crammed into the McLean Creek Campground and took their gas guzzling noise making terrain destroyers out and tore up some of Alberta's best wilderness and camping land. All for the sake of getting drunk and muddy. But on a positive note it wasn't just the male of the species getting stupid. There were women too riding around in bikinis without helmets (real smart).

They are just too many idiots in the world. Too much money and not enough brains. In fact some times I think money and brains are inversely related. They must be. Let's take your average ATV er. He is driving a truck to pull his trailer or carry his ATV. or one truck driven by the significant other to pull the trailer and one by the nut in question, that would be 40 to 60 grand for vehicles, another 10 large for the toy and 20 more for rolling accommodations. Now add to that 160 dollars for gas out from town and back and another 120 for camping fees thirty dollars per night x 4 nights one of which you don't even use because you have to get out early to save a spot. Then 60 bucks for beer, another 100 for groceries (Steaks or better). I don't know how much for dope but you are what you smoke I'm told. And judging from the reports in the paper there was a lot of doping going on. Well you get the idea this is not a cheap pastime and what was the outcome acres of terrain torn up and drunken revelries and destruction. Loads of garbage strewn about and a good time had by a very few. Now the government wants to do something but fortunately they'll get over it by next week.

On the bright side we spent the first weekend of the summer up at Sundre. It was 25 degrees (Celsius for our American friends. ) and we got to try out the air conditioning. What a great perk. The weather was great. We got to see old friends who we had not seen since last fall. The new deck was really nice. All in all we had a good weekend. The brother-in-law and sister-in-law came up for a visit on Sunday and we had a good visit and to top it off the guys beat the gals in a game of Aggravation. I have not played that for years. Oh sure the gals drew first blood just when I was almost home and sure they gloated then but the guys stormed back to win it all! Winners and still family champs! I wonder what the girls meant when they said they "let us win?"

We also made arrangements to get the roof on the deck. There were a couple of surprise showers on Sunday afternoon and we had to run for cover. The roof on the deck should prevent that problem. I guess we will find out in a couple of weeks.

And last but not least we gave the new armchair a workout. There was a spot that just cried out for an armchair in the trailer. So we have been keeping a eye out since last fall for a small leather armchair and we found one just the right size. Along with our old foot stool it is just perfect and the dog kennel makes a perfect side table for it. Just one little problem the chair is the best seat in the house and I'm told it is very comfortable but it looks great and Ellen looks great in it. She promised to let me try it next weekend.

Looking forward to our next visit up there...

Randy

Spring is in the Air

2008-05-03T19:15:00.003-06:00

It looks like, could possibly be, maybe, spring is here. Yeah we been fooled before and it did snow on Wednesday. And there has been a chill in the wind but it was sunny and warm today so it could be that spring is here. At least the plants think so. They are starting to bud out.

The Saskatoons look like they will be loaded with blossoms this year too. For those who don't know what they are, Saskatoons are a small blue berry that is native to western Canada. And the northwestern states too but I think they call them service berries. It doesn't matter they make a great pie if you can get enough.

It is a struggle here though. Belle discovered Saskatoons last year. I could not figure out why all the lower branches had no berries. I thought maybe a low frost got them. Or some sort of bug. Well it was a parasite alright a fat little beagle. I came out one night and there she was grazing. She cleaned the branches off as high as she could reach. If she had stood on her hind legs we would not have even got a taste. If they look like they are going to be a good crop this year I am going to fence the bushes off. I will fight with the birds for them but Belle is supposed to be on my side. It could have been worse Dixie is taller and smarter than Belle and she would have figured a way to get all of them if she had know what Belle was up to.

But I digress. Spring is here! Shh not too loud. Old man winter is probably not out of earshot yet. He can always make a return visit. Just our luck he likes the scenery round here. Every time we think he's gone he comes back for a short stay. He's like Peter Falk in the old Columbo movies "Ah Just one more t'ing!" He hit us twice in the last couple of weeks once just in Calgary a 12 inch dump and then a week later all over the southern half of the province. We thought the Calgary dump was a good omen for the Flames because they won when we got a late dump of snow in the playoffs. Yeah right another old wives tale bites the dust. We need the moisture. That is true but the snow comes and then a Chinook comes and it all runs away. I'll settler for a good 3 day rain later in May.

I have had enough of winter. It's May. According to song in Camelot winter exits March the second on the dot. Old man winter has overstayed his welcome by two months if that is the case. I just hope he is gone till November. But as I recall he came for a visit to the Stampede one July and then was late for Christmas the same year.

But despite his persistence the grass is getting greener and the leaves will be on the trees soon and Belle will be munching Saskatoons before you know it.

Its spring ... pass it on.

Randy

Could Have Been Worse

2008-04-07T14:57:00.005-06:00

It was a bad weekend or so it seemed at the time. On Saturday morning we were driving over to a new place for breakfast and enroute I lost power steering, the temp went up and the charge light came on all on a van less than a year old. First reaction was that the belt had failed and broken. But I had not heard it go. So suddenly breakfast is delayed and we're on our way to the dealership to fix the belt. Well the girls and I get up well before the service tech at the dealership and it is an hour or so wait until we can even get the car in, then they don't do service work on the weekend. And what is wrong with the van the alternator fell off. It sheared the bolts off and depending on what they find in two days it may or may not be covered by the bumper to bumper warranty.

I phoned Enterprise rent a car and they came and picked us up at the dealership and we rented a van for an unspecified duration. Enterprise were the first shining light in what was shaping up to be a dreary weekend. Very professional and friendly, I have to recommend them for all your car rental needs. They go over and above.

Now it is three hours since we set off and we have the rental and are on our way back for breakfast. On our way there we see the traffic lights are all out. The south end of the city is having a major power failure. The restaurant is closed. So we had to find an alternative and we finally get our breakfast at noon. Not an auspicious start. We wanted to run some errands so we thought that we would take the cell phone because the way things were headed we might need it and the battery on it was dead again. The battery had been charged just two days before but was not holding a charge. A replacement for it was $70 so we went back to Telus and we wound up getting new phones, one for me and one for Ellen.

Sunday was uneventful, considering that Saturday certainly had been this was a good thing. Now with only the van to worry about I started to relax.

Now it is Monday. I phoned Courtesy Chrysler (still one of the best Dealerships in town for nearly 20 years now) to find out the bad news on the car. Turns out that it was a warranty item and it would be ready later today. I went home to see about the upgrade to my security system. They were able to do it by just replacing my keypad at the back door. No charge as long as I signed up for another 3 years at a lower monthly rate than I am paying now. Winner,

Then Courtesy called my car was ready and at no charge. So I took the rental back and they gave me a ride to the dealership and I got my car back, The rental was only $180 for three days including full insurance. Which was the full cost of the weekend.

Sure I have a new cell phone plan and an extra charge there but we were planning that for a while because we knew the old phone that worked fine could not get a replacement battery. The car well things happen and what can you do? The service manager said that the alternator that was replaced was noisy but he had no idea why it sheared the bolts off. But they fixed everything and it was all covered and they were quick. All in all I got good service from everyone I dealt with.

What could have been seen was a bad weekend turned out to be not too bad at all. Good service from Enterprise, Courtesy Chrysler and Telus all helped make the pain go away. Thank you everyone.

Oh and the breakfast place, Cora's was open and busy on Sunday but we got there before the rush and it was terrific. Lots of real good food and good service, Just remember to get there early or you will be waiting. We'll be back.

Counting my blessings...

Randy

Ten Digits

2008-04-01T08:17:00.005-06:00

Yesterday I learned that we in Alberta are going to ten digit phone numbers from 7. Not that dialing an extra 3 digits will kill anyone but along with that come extra costs. Like the nearly 100 dollars I have to outlay to up grade my security system so that it can call home when some cell packing dirt bag breaks into my house. And what's more my system is old almost 7 years old so that makes it over the hill. And I have to upgrade that at a cost of God knows what.

Seven years old does not make something obsolete. Except for electronics I guess. So I am on the hook or unprotected. And the girls don't count. In fact if you look the Beagle up on the Internet I am sure that somewhere it says protection: NONE. ('Cause I seen it!) If someone broke in Belle and Dixie would wonder over tails a wagging to see what treats the intruder brought. Anyone could clean out my place for the price of a couple of milk bones or a rawhide chewy if I was relying on the girls to protect the place.

So why do we need the upgrade? Simply put Cell phones. Every one has a cell phone or two. And a land line and a blackberry etc. The province has a population of 4 million tops why do we need 40 million phone numbers? Sure you need your home phone heaven knows the telemarketers need someone to call at suppertime. And there is your office phone, and your office cell (So you can get interrupted in that meeting, and so on and so on.

But what really pushed it over the top are kids. Kids as young as 10 or 12 with cell phones. Kids whose Idea of a good time is sitting on thier butts on the couch text messaging to their buddy in the easy chair next to them. Kids who think they ahve to be in constant contact with their friends. Even during school when thy should be paying attention. Kids from 10 to 25 who can't leave home without their electronic apron string. How did we survive the 60's or get out of the fifties alive without having a cell phone.

Do I hav a cell? Yes. I use call forwarding to link my home phone to my cell when I am out of town for more than a few hours. I don't carry it with me all the time. And it is about 7 years old too, it doesn't take pictures play games or surf the net. It makes phone calls. It could text message but it makes phone calls and does not need to text message. I can call someone and they don't need to be able to read alphabet soup I can talk to them. But I don't need to be in contact 24-7.

The idea that you have to be at the beck and call of all your buddies all the time is absurd. That you need a phone on your person all the time is ridiculous. No one is that important. If you believe that you are that important you are suffering from delusions of grandure. That belief in the old days would have labelled you a nut. If you live to have people call you on your cell and cannot make it through the day without one maybe you are a nut. But you have plenty of company. So much that we need 10 times as many phone numbers as we have people. And what ticks me off is your insane need is costing me money.

Just sitting here waiting for your call....

Randy

View Master

2008-03-15T18:16:00.003-06:00

Do you remember view masters; little toys that you put picture reels in and saw everything in 3D? Well It turns out that my wife's grand father had a Stereoscopic Camera for taking those kind of pictures. And most of the family photos were taken and mounted on the reels. I think my brother in law has the camera and paraphernalia for mounting the pictures on the reels and all. But it is a really fussy process to create them. Anyway it looks to be a dying technology because you can't easily get the reels or cameras anymore except on EBay maybe. And hasn't Kodak even gone digital?

Anyway the camera had two lenses set about eye width apart and t00k two images at once with just a little different perspective. The images were taken on slide film and when mounted the different perspective gave the 3d effect. The biggest problem was that if a picture adds ten pounds the 3d being two pictures added twenty so women didn't like it!!!! Also it was a manual fiddly process to take the uncut slide film strips and cut the images into little tiny chips and mount them in the reels. If it had been more popular today's crack users could really get into a career tweaking view master reels but who knew?

In any case, another brother in law has decided to get all the pictures scanned from the reels and I am going to touch them up as put them on CD for everyone in the family. I have done this sort of thing before when I made up slide shows for the in-laws and my parent's 50th anniversaries. Al is doing this for a birthday present for his mom. I think its is a great idea and the fringe benefit is that we get a copy of all the old pictures.

There are a few things to remember when you do this kind of work however. First you are going to see somethings that well are pretty darn funny (ok scary too but mostly funny). The fashions and the hair styles are great for a laugh but don't. Especially not out loud. Some of those pictures may be your loved ones and having lived though it will not see the humour. Remeber they think those pictures are ... normal! They think that people really looked like that can you believe it, ha!

The second thing is that when you are discussing the subjects do not use adjectives. For example do not say "Hey who is that homely kid with the big honkin' schnoz?" because again some of those pictures may be your loved ones (in some cases your wives). They may not have thought of themselves as homely or their schnozes as "big honkin'". Those type of comments will get you a guaranteed reservation in the dog house. Trust me this is the voice of experience.

In spite of that I am looking forward to it. I like old pictures and in case my wife reads this I hope to see lots of pictures of her as a baby. She must have been as beautiful baby 'cause baby look at her now!

Sucking up for all I am worth...

Randy

Springtime

2008-03-08T19:43:00.005-07:00

"Bald eagle's back in the Cottonwood tree,
Old brown hills are just about bare"

That is a lyric from Ian Tyson's song Springtime and it applies this year. At the risk of angering the weather Gods I think spring is here. Maybe the ground hogs were right. It was 10 degrees celcius here today. I was able to take the girls to dog disneyland (the off leash dog park) in just a hoodie. For those of my generation just a kangaroo jacket.

Snow is almost gone just a bit left in the shady spots. That is going fast. At least here in the city. We were up to the trailer last weekend to show it to Ellen's mom who was visiting, There seems to be quite abit of snow there yet. We had to walk in or risk getting stuck. And there was a few inches of snow around. But it was warm and that was going too.

It was a mistake to go up there. I was reminded of what I am missing and now the wait until the park opens for the season and we can stay up there is going to seem really long. You know the feeling. Remember when you were a kid and saw the first Christmas decorations of the season and how they made it seem Christmas was sooooo far off. Well that was the effect the quick wisit to the trailer last week had. I guess I will just have to wait. The warm weather is not making it easy.

Oh well nothing can be done about it. Like they say everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it. And I can do nothing about it either. But with any luck it will warm up and we will be able to get the park open early. April is not that far away, 30 sleeps? Just like we used to do with Christmas eh?

On the edge of my seat waiting...

Randy

PS Happy Anniverasry Dixie she's been a member of our pack for a year today.

Titanic

2008-02-28T07:33:00.005-07:00

What do I have in common with the Titanic this morning? Well nothing really except that ice killed the Titanic and darn near killed me. No I was not hit by a berg in the north Atlantic. I slipped on it under the snow. A common theme I know but one that bears repeating. Be careful out there hidden dangers lurk everywhere under an innocent pile of white. Well here in Calgary at least.
It was the subject of an item on the local news just last night. And it is the reason I can barely type this morning. While walking the dogs I wiped out on the ice twice. There is no warning and no forgiveness. One step and you are on your backside on the ground. The girls even hit the ground. That was the only warning I would get. Dixie is sporting a sore hip and Belle took one on the nose. I have a somewhat less than useful shoulder and a pulled hip. But then again I fall harder than the girls. At any rate when you see us coming down the walk we look like walking wounded.
On the plus side the temperature over the next couple of days is going to be on the plus side. Maybe as much as 10 C on Friday. That should take care of the snow and anything hiding under it. I hope. Otherwise its going to be a dicey few days till people get their walks cleared.
I better sign off. This is silly but it is actually painful to type and mousing is nearly out of the question. I guess I landed just right for a guy in the computer business. I wonder if walking the dogs is covered by workers comp. Some one's got to pay and it wasn't even the dogs pulling me off balance either this time so I can't even punish them. Maybe I'll just be sore and surly with everyone. Curmudgeon becomes me.

Grumbling, moaning and complaining ...

Randy

Sore Fingers

2008-02-09T18:35:00.001-07:00

I tryed to learn guitar many years ago. All I accomplished was a) I can tune a Guitar and b) I got sore fingers. I don't think I ever did develop calluses on my fingers so since I was not too big on pain I let it lapse. Well lo these many years later I thought I would take it up again. What is different now now I have the intenet.
Let me explain. Now I can go to various sites on the intenet and get on line lessons from someone who actually knows what the hell they are doing with a guitar. They can show me what the cords are supposed to sound like and how to finger the chords. They can show me how to properly strum the guitar and hold it properly. And they give you files to play along with. You are not just sitting there plunking along on your own.
So what have I learned in the last two weeks. Well I still don't like pain. And learning is still a painful process. Nylon strings help somewhat they are not as tough as the steel strings. They actually give a bet when you press on them. And I am actually learning a few chords and how to strum. No Johnny Cash just yet, although I am dressed in black today, but I feel like I am making progress.
What do I want to get out of this. I want to be able to play a few songs so that I can accompny myself singing. Just to be able to tinker a bit if you like. I don't care if I never get good enough for someone else but I want to be good enough for myself that I can learn how to play by ear.

If I can accomplish that I will have made my goal. In the meantime I have sore fingers. But in the plus side they are recovering faster. The first day they were sore for three days. All I could manage was 20 minutes every few days. Today they are good enough that I can type this in a few hours. I understand that when I get calluses I will be set. Then all I have to master is, well playing. I can't wait.

As for now, like the old joke goes: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice!

My cyber instructor says 20 minutes a day is better than 3 hours on the weekend. And he's right. It will just take me time to get organized. And set aside half an hour a day to practice. If I want it enough I can do it. When it's 40 below and we don't walk the girls its easy. It will take some planning when it warms up.

Now any requests?

Randy

Groundhog Day

2008-02-02T10:56:00.001-07:00

According to rodents we will have an early spring. Wireton Willie and some other gopher from Nova Scotia did not dee their shadows and so an early spring. Which in this neck of the woods means only 5 more weeks of winter a big Chinook and a two foot dump of snow just for the heck of it.

If you beleive that a rat can prognisticate the weather then let me tell you about this bridge I have for sale. It is a bright sunny cold day here in western Canada and spring time in the Rockies is still a couple or 3 months off. March 21 is the first official day of spring and if it warms before that count your blessings. We always get a final blast of winter in the form of a big dump of snow in late March or early April sometimes as late as May and that is the end of winter here, Mother nature's way of saying "And another thing!". It is the way of things and that is that.

But Groundhog day is a way to get a bit of hope. To see the light at the end of the tunnel and for that it works. The little critters did not see their shadow so a break from this bleak and lately very cold winter is on its way and soon. And with that to cling to the cold and snow and darkness is just a bit easier to take.

I'll bet that is what Groundhog day was invented for. Some old european guy in the middle of a dreary Polish winter decided he needed a way to get his neighbours to feel better. And what beter way than a magic gopher. Yank him out of a fine winter slumber and if it is a dreary day proclaim an early spring then everyone off to the local watering hole for a few cool ones. An excuse for a party and if the prediction fails blame the rat. Darn clever if you ask me.

And that is all that it is. A bit of animal abuse rousting the poor bugger that way and a party. But if it works and gets everyone out of their winter funk so much the better.

I don't have to rely on meterological rodents. I have my regular dog walks to keep me feeling good. After a long day at the office its good to get the girls out on the leash. And if you've got something on your mind or to get off your chest you can tell the dogs. The girls are good listeners most of the time. (They just have a little trouble with obedience.) And talking to dogs is much better than talking to yourself as you go walking in a winter wonderland. But if all you have is Groundhog Day I hope the promise of an early spring helps you get by.

Just putting the dog's boots and coats on for thier walk...

Randy

Life at 50 Below

2008-01-29T07:47:00.000-07:00

With the wind chill it was -49C yesterday. Cold in any language to be sure. It was the first day that I have not walked the dogs in the nearly two years I have owned them. At that temperature it is just too dangerous. Boots and coats not withstanding. The Icy blast is supposed to last until Thursday. With a bit of luck I will be able to take them out Thursday night. But for now I think they are happy with 5 minute zips outside to do their business. And not a lot of time wasted at that. Funny how at 50 below you don't have to inspect every bump under the snow!

So at this temperature you can guess that the weather was the lead story on the news. How cold it is, how the EMS has been touring downtown to look for homeless who might be in trouble, how the C Train was running late because of the cold etc etc. Like we had not had enough of the weather already.

But then their survey poll asked how do you deal with 50 below. They of course were looking for responses like "I bundle up and only go out if I have to" or "I cocoon and stay inside". Well that's nice work if you can get it but some of us have to go out. We deal with it by; well dealing with it. Dress warmly, and do the bare minimum outside. For some that is a brisk dash from the house to the garage into the car, from the car to the office etc. For others like our postmen you bundle up and take it on the chin. Then again Postal delivery another job that is overpaid every day except these then it evens out.

But getting back to the news poll they wanted to know how to deal with 50 below well a picture is worth a thousand words. The girls know how.

In my next life I want to come back as a spoiled beagle.

Trying to thaw out....

Randy

Dead Cartridges For the Last TIme

2008-01-21T09:56:00.001-07:00

Dead ink cartridges again. I went to print a page on my Lexmark Ink jet printer and the ink cartridges were dried up. I think I got 25 pages out of these but 20 of them were clean the head pages. So what's a guy to do? Why rant grumble and complain of course. Which I did. The dogs ignored me but Ellen started looking through the flyers. Staples has nothing on for ink cartridges (how is anyone ever going to do their Christmas Thank-you cards?) But they had a Color Laser on for $170. This weekend only.

Well off to the Staples Office Supplies store I go to get a new set of cartridges (and yes I need both). They are $79. About 3 bucks per page not counting paper. It's my own darn fault because I don't print that much at home and if you don't the darn ink just dries up. And in the winter in Canada with the relative humidity hovering around 0% those cartridges just do not last. While I am there I decided to check out the laser. And what it came down to was that for the cost of 2 sets of cartridges I could get a Color Laser. Even with the starter toners I should be able to get 500+ pages. And the toner likes to stay dry. So I broke down and bought it.

Now I know I won't be able to print pictures on it (yet). But I can still edit the pictures I want the way that I want and then fire them over to Wally Mart to get them printed for 20 cents each which is cheap. And I read about photo paper that works in a laser that will soon be coming to an Office Depot near you. So the Laser was a good idea.

It is a Samsung CLP300. According to the stickers the smallest color laser in the world. According to the manual a small printer with big printer capabilities. Full color or black and white, poster printing (it prints your picture /poster over several pages then you glue them together a nice to have) double sided printing, Booklet printing, all kinds of things. I can even configure it as a network printer so I would be able to run it over the wireless net without having my desktop computer running should I decide to do that. It kind of reminds me of a little dog that thinks that it is a German Shepherd. A small package with big features.

I played with it for part of Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon and I like it. Yeah it's just a printer but in this case at least I think I got my money's worth. We will see over time how well it works but for now I am a happy camper. I'm going to give it a big test and print out the User manual double sided and in full color. Just think How much more I will be able to do if I actually RTFM (read the freaking manual).

Sitting here sniffing printer fumes....

Randy

Old Friends

2007-12-21T18:24:00.000-07:00

It was the annual XFH Christmas lunch today. The day we get together with the old crowd from the Foothills Hospital IT department to commiserate and remember the old times. There were fellows there that I have not seen for over ten years. No great changes just everyone getting older. Where they once talked of children there is mention of Grand children. A lot more grey except where there is a bit more forehead but basically the same.

The group consists of mostly the tech support group or what remains of it and the rest of us who have moved on. It only took a few minutes to get up to speed with what has gone on over the past year and then it was like old times, joking kibitzing and carrying on. Some old friends were not able to attend but most sent their regards. It was fun to catch up and we parted with promises to plan next year's get together a little further in advance so that more people can attend. I hope that happens.

I personally intent to reserve a holiday day so that I can attend. The lunch runs a bit long so unless you plan to play hookie for half a day its better to take the time as a holiday. And in my case it I would like to partake of a few cold ones I can't do that on a work day. But the chance to get together with the old gang is worth reserving a day.

On the work front I am using up the remainder of my holidays from this year. Use 'em or lose 'em is the policy at work so when I found myself with a few days left at the end of the year I found myself with time off. Ellen doesn't get 4 weeks so I may be in this predicament every year. I plan to make the most of the time by doing nothing in particular except walking the girls and putting my feet up. Hopefully the weather will co-operate. Santa Claus is coming to town but I hope when he comes by our house he keeps it down, I may be having a nap.

Relaxing, taking it easy....

Randy

No Kitty For the Cao's

2007-12-12T19:09:00.001-07:00

Well we found all kinds of cats, young ones old, skinny ones, fat ones, black cats white cats multi colored and striped cats. As I said before oodles of cats and crates of kittens. But it doesn't matter Paula in addition to being scared of mice is just as scared of cats. So no cat for the Cao family.

Quang told me that she is terrified of the neighbour's cat. The cat occasionally comes into their yard and when it does she hides in the house. I may have to have an intervention, take them or Paula at least down to the Humane society, get a couple of the kittens to turn on the charm. You can't be scared of a little powder puff curled up in your hand looking cute. Heck that's why little animals are cute, so you don't kill then when they get into trouble and so you adopt them at the shelter.

The Animal Christmas party was wall to wall people. You were lucky to even see an animal. The few dogs they had were all on hold or adopted, and it looked like a lot of the cats were on their way out too. What was a good deal was the sales room especially the everything for a buck table, they had dog bags for 1 dollar for 105 bags. I bought 5 dollars worth. It will take the girls more than a few days to fill all those. So it was a good deal all round.

Belle had to get new shoes this week. She walked through the bottoms of her's. So I went to Pet planet where I got Dixie's. Just in time too, they only had one pair of small ones left. So now Belle is the proud owner of a brand new set of HOT PINK boots. They are so bright I think they melt the snow just sitting there. Belle doesn't mind them though she is color blind. Although that pink is so bright she might even be able to see it. So far Dixie has not gotten jealous but I think she's been looking over at them.

And our Chinook finally arrived and is supposed to stay through the weekend. We are planning to see if we can take Ellen's Aunt Norma out to a buffet on Sunday morning and we will be putting up the tree on Saturday. It will be (in the words of the Christmas song) "beginning to look a lot like Christmas"! And if the Chinook kicks in t0 high gear it will look a lot like a Calgary Christmas, brown and dusty.

Just sitting here counting sleeps til Christmas...

Randy

Christmas Shopping

2007-12-09T09:58:00.000-07:00

Finally done Christmas Shopping. The out of town stuff was done and mailed two weeks ago and we had everything for everyone else locally done last week. Just had to go out and get something for Ellen and she for me. So yesterday we went out early and finished it off. The malls are crazy. Wall to wall people. And every indication is that it will be getting worse. But we are done just regular grocery shopping and God forbid we have to go out and get something from another store.

So today we have a Christmas event at the Humane society. It is the animals Christmas party, as opposed to the office animals Christmas party. From noon to three we get to go visit the animals that are in the slammer for the holidays. It should be fun. But we will have to leave the girls home. I can imagine the worlds biggest dog fight if everyone showed up with their dogs.

I have an ulterior motive for going to the society, I need to check out the cats for a colleague. Quang has mice in his house and his wife is scared of mice. He has tried to get them with traps but he says that is expensive. And the little blighters keep coming back, so I suggested that he get a cat. And they have lots, lots and lots. You see the city just passed a law that says cats have to be licensed in Calgary and oops all the bad cat owners who don't want to licence or care for old kitty any more have been turning them in left and right. As a result the humane society has oodles of cats and crates of kittens.

Now I would be the last person to suggest that someone get a pet for Christmas, the chances are when little Johnnie or Janie get tired of playing with the new pet somewhere around noon on boxing day, or the first time Kitty drops one behind the Christmas tree, or better yet climbs it back it will go. But in this case I think it would be a good idea. A cat about a year or two old that is a good mouser would be a good addition to the house. Ted is almost 4 and would do good with a pet and Miss Hillary would do well to grow up with a pet. And a cat is independent enough to get away from them when she needs space. Now i expect that if they got a good mouser it will likely be one to show off its trophies in the kitchen at supper time but hey that's what cats do.

So part of the mission for the Humane Society is to scope out a good cat for the Caos. And then my Christmas shopping will be done. And oh yeah, I don't think Paula will care if the kitty clashes with the drapes she is more practical than that.

Looking for a good mouser...

Randy

Poor Dixie

2007-11-29T12:55:00.000-07:00

Dixie is my summer dog. She likes the heat while her adopted sister likes the cold. She is perfectly happy inside Belle needs to be out and about even if its just in the back yard. Belle is the winter dog. According to Belle snow is something to romp in, always, and rivers are for wading no matter the time of year. Dixie on the other hand likes her terra a little more firma. And water is for drinking otherwise why are there those nice dishes in the house.

And it is winter now. We had our first real taste of it this week. About a half inch of snow minus zero temperatures and wind. Not pleasant by any means. But the girls still need their walks. So out we went. Half way around Dixie is hopping on three feet and setting a blistering pace at that. Belle is nose down up to the eyeballs sniffing for what's under the snow. I expected Dixie not to like the cold so we got her back home as quick as we could. Nothing like a nipping from old Jack Frost to get Dixie on the move. Belle resisted as well as she could but due to the wind chill I sided with Dixie.

The next time out I put their coats on. Now how a coat like that for a dog can possibly do anything more than annoy them is beyond me, but they work. It helped that the wind had died down but the girls were nice and warm and back to their usual pace. So the second winter walk was fine. Dixie doesn't mind the cold if she is bundled up apparently.

The next day the city went around and salted the streets so they were slushy and wet. It was not too cold so we went without coats. And for the first while everything was good. But one street in particular was wet and sloppy and when Dixie crossed it she started to howl and didn't know which foot to lift first. You would have thought I was beating her. So I cleaned off her feet as best as I could and that stopped the crying at least. On the way home I carried her across that street. What ever chemical the city uses sure did not agree with her. For the next walk I dug out Belle's boots for Dixie.

She didn't like them in the house. She was high stepping around the living room like a cat in a wading pool. But outside she figured out what the boots were for almost immediately and she was just fine. She set the path for Belle through the deepest snow. So I was out today buying dog boots. I thought that since the chemical aggravated Dixie as much as it did it can't be good for Belle either so they both need their own boots. $40 later they are both ready to go. And at $40 a set they are as expensive as my shoes. I only paid $20 for my runners at Wally-mart but then again I only got two shoes, Dixie got 4. I don't know how families with kid's manage a budget. Anyway tonight Dixie gets to break in her own pair(s) of "Muttluks". Maybe Summer Dog will survve this winter after all. I will keep you posted.

Bundling everyone up against the cold ...

Randy

STUPID People

2007-11-22T10:55:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I saw another article about texting while driving. That one solicited feedback and for the most part the feedback was either: "People who text while driving are STUPID" (the correct answer) or "I am not STUPID I am some kind of super human who can do both and don't you be telling me I can't " (the wrong answer). One "stuper-man" said all it took was "distributed attention". That is as i understand it the ability to split your attention between two activities. Nice to know there is a term for driving with half a brain.

Driving especially in a major urban center in winter in Canada is a full time job. It takes all your attention because the knuckle head in the other car might very well be texting, reloading his iPod, having breakfast, surfing the net, or reading the paper behind the wheel. "Distributing" their attention. Sorry but doing anything else while navigating traffic is STUPID. But if you are 25 and immortal you can do it. Guess again. If you are not paying attention to your driving you will be paying your insurance man. Sooner or later those habits will catch up with you.

We have all seen the doofus with the cell phone and the coffee careening down the road in and out of lanes expecting everyone to watch out for them. I say hit 'em. Hit 'em hard enough to jam that cell phone in their ear and dump that double double all over their designer suit and all over the leather interior of that leased gas guzzler with all the toys and whistles. I heard of a bumper sticker once that read "Maybe you would drive better if I crammed that cell phone up your ass!" I agree with the sentiment (and want one for my car).

It should be a law that if the police see you texting, chatting on the cell, reading a book, bobbing up and down tweaking the stereo, or any one of a hundred stupid things while driving, they should be able to stop you and take you off the road right then and there. Being stupid is not criminal. Getting behind the wheel and being stupid is. What did you do before text messaging and cell phones. People survived being out of touch for more than 10 minutes. The world will not end if someone cannot get you while you are in traffic. We did without that for years and some of us still do. They don't call them "crack berries" for nothing. You are addicted if you can't go for the duration of you commute with out your wireless device. And feeding your habit putting everyone else at risk is STUPID.

One last point, the car makers are enablers for these junkies too. They are installing technology in the vehicles that facilitate people being STUPID. GM is prviding an option to allow you to download music to your iPod while driving. And an option on my van (that I don't have, want or need) is a hands free phone that you can plug your cell into. It will turn your cell into a hands free phone with, (get this) call waiting! There is about 30 pages on how to use that phone in the user manual and only 3 pages on how to use the transmission. Think they might have their priorities all screwed up? Me too.

Sitting here watching the world go to hell in a hand basket...

Randy

A Chinook Would Be Nice

2007-11-20T07:40:00.001-07:00

For those of you not familiar with it a Chinook (shin-ook) is a warm westerly wind. The climate scientists say that that it is warm Pacific air that is blown through the passes in the Rockies that warms up the province. Well our little piece of the province anyway. The word is a native word that means "snow eater". And if there is any snow around a Chinook will make short work of it. And we are waiting for our first one of the season. It has not been really cold, no minus zero Fahrenheit weather but cold enough. With the wind cold enough to make hands and joints ache. Cold enough to pull the winter coats out of storage. And its been that way for a couple of weeks now. Time for a Chinook.

The weather man on the TV has promised one by Friday. Unfortunately Dave is usually spot on on the bad news and off on the good. That is he is able to predict bad weather correctly more often than he predicts good weather. Or so it seems.

At least there is no snow and ice yet. That is what makes dog walking down right dangerous. Last year I fell on the icy sidewalks a couple of times. It was a good thing that Belle was young and quick because I nearly landed on her the first time. And how do you go back to the humane society and explain a squashed dog!

The second time Dixie was just in front of me and she slipped on the ice. And as I was telling her to be careful I wiped out. Belle tried to keep going (after all I had fallen before) but Dixie came back to see if I was dead. She was newly adopted then and needed to know if she still had a meal ticket.

And that's the bad side of a Chinook. If there is snow there will be ice and lots of it. So before the snow comes it would be nice to get a Chinook to warm things up a bit. One last chance to get out and do some of that yard work we have bee procrastinating about. Picking up the frozen dog rockets and picking up the garbage that has blown around. Actually I picked up after the dogs but we have a whole new collection of trash thanks to a gale that came through last week for a few days. (But unless it gets warmer that's not going to happen.. A bit of snow covers a multitude of sins.)

But I can't put off getting the Christmas Lights up. I don't want to look like the Grinch house. It looks like there will be lots of lights this year because some folks have their's up already. I think people are coming to Calgary this year. They don't put up lights if they are going away. So judging by the show this will be the place to be come December 25. And it is much more fun to put the lights up when it is warm. So a Chinook would be nice.

Hunkered down by the fire till the Chinook comes...

Randy

Give the Guns Away Free Then Sell the Bullets

2007-11-09T14:44:00.001-07:00

There was an article on the web today talking about the price of ink for Kodak printers. And how Kodak was lowering the price on their ink which was overpriced to begin with etc etc. Well whoop-tee-do. It is their traditional approach. They used to give away Brownie cameras and then soak folks for the film. It is the idea that you give away the guns then sell the bullets to make your money. Cheap device expensive consumables. Why is this a surprise?

The worst case I saw for that was with a Lexmark printer I bought. The printer was $67 and came with 2 smaller ink cartridges. The printer was capable of using larger cartridges but they cost $79 a set. The small replacements were $45 a set. So what to do? I went with the larger replacements, getting hosed in the process. If the printer came from the factory with the larger cartridges I would have been better off getting a whole new printer. But it only comes with the small ones so replacing the machine just to replace the small cartridges was not viable. Pretty sneaky these printer guys. But let me tell you the next time they jack the cartridge prices look out. Also if the printer gives me one hiccup of trouble it is out the door too.

What was it Stompin' Tom sang? "The consumer they call us we always get a fair shake. We buy a Fridge that doesn't freeze and a stove that doesn't bake!" He nailed it pretty good if you ask me. And electronics are the worst offenders.

Take IPODs for example or MP3 players to a lesser extent. You can get a 500 meg IPOD that will store 700 songs. Several days worth of music non stop but is that good enough? No sir you need the 1 gig IPOD because you absolutely cannot live with out your top 1440 songs. Who has a list of 1440 top songs? No one. No one has 700 favorites either. I will put money on it no one, except the odd weirdo with too much time on their hands, can even list 700 songs. So what do they need a one gig for? Just cause they can afford it and it is bigger than their buddy's.

Everything is hype these days. They gouge you on the prices and hype it up till you think you can't live without it. Well give your head a shake folks do you really believe the hype?

And Christmas is coming. Hypee Holidays. Watch the companies ramp up the hype. The excited states are teetering on a recession so this will be their last chance to fleece the old consumers before the crunch. Better get the hype in gear big time. An one of their favorite tricks is to give the guns away free and then sell the bullets.

Mortgage Christmas and Hype the New Year...

Randy

Banff

2007-11-06T18:38:00.000-07:00

We took the new van out to Banff on the weekend. It was Indian summer in Calgary and we wanted to try out the van. It was not Indian summer in Banff. A mere 80 miles and a few hundred feet in elevation and its winter. It was right cold and snowy out there and there was a wind off the Bow. Wind in the mountains. Aren't they supposed to stop the wind? Maybe it was just the fact that it was colder than we expected that made the wind so cold. The girls did not seem to care. There were squirrels or at least squirrel scents to get them excited as we walked them around town. So they were excited and let everyone know with an impromptu concert.

It will sure be nice when they get that town finished construction. World famous Banff Avenue was all torn up. In fact you could not drive right down the main drag. But since we did not know that there was construction we were pleased to see a reduction in traffic. Usually Banff rush hour runs from 10 am to 2 am. But last weekend traffic was bearable. Its the shoulder season up there too so that helped. The shoulder season is too late for summer but too early for skiing. Just the right time for us semi locals.

We did not get into the shops. We left too late in the day and spent too long walking the dogs around so all we did was grab a quick bite at Melissa's Missteak. One of our favorite restaurants. They specialize in homemade soup and sandwiches at lunch time and we like to go there. I expect that their steaks are good given the name but we are usually there at lunchtime. The food is good the rices are reasonable and the servings are too big. Everything you want in a restaurant. After a late lunch it was time to go home.

We could not find a parking spot in the outdoor lot so we had to park in the parkade. It was free but we wound up on the top level. Now normally I would take the stairs but with two dogs in tow that could be dangerous with leashes and all coming down four flights. You take your life in your hands going down three steps from the deck some mornings. So we took the elevators. And it was a glass elevator to boot. But the girls surprised us they did not panic or get excited, The rode down and back up like a couple of pros. You'd have though they did it every day, Someone had spilled potato chips and they did not even eat those. They were real ladies.

They did not think being left in the car was a good idea and sang a bit then but that is because we were obviously going for another walk and a ride in the funny little room and not taking them. We could have tied them up outside the restaurant but the last time we did that we almost lost Tiara. She chewed through her lead. It would have taken the girls about a minute to replicate the feat. Then we would have had to chase down two hounds in a town full of squirrel scents. No small trick. So the van was the best place for them but I think they would give you an argument on that.

All in all it was a good trip. The new van performed better than I expected (Chrysler sure fixed the cruise control as it kept the speed up on Scott Lake Hill both ways the old van could not do that even new,) The ride was good and quiet. Banff was not it's usual crazy self. And the girls were good as gold, if it would have been Indian summer it would have been a perfect trip.

Sitting back trying to get warm...

Randy

Fighting the Flu

2007-10-30T18:52:00.001-06:00

There is one thing according to the pitchmen that children will share in a Daycare and that is a virus. And they do. With everyone the caregivers included. And since Ellen is a caregiver she gets her share too. But she has been there long enough to be relatively immune to what ever the little darlings can dig up. And I do mean dig since most of them are hard rock nose miners! But since Ellen is semi immune she becomes a carrier only. And I wind up with the little gifts that keep on giving.

But I must be developing immunity too. There is something going round the office and nearly everyone has or had it to one degree or another except me (knock on wood). Or if I did get it it was a very mild bout. (But I am worried that I may just be the last in line for this bug so when everyone else is over it I will be sick. If that happens it happens.)

Now building up immunity vicariously is a good theory but an alternative might be it might be the walks. I walk the girls every day three times a day weekdays and twice a day on weekends, (that is because they usually get longer walks during the day on weekends and I like to sleep in till 6:30 or 7:00 on weekends). I think the daily constitutional is having the effect of keeping the cold bugs at bay. The cold weather especially makes you tougher and the fresh air is less contaminated than being inside the house every day. I think that the little break from sitting in the house all day gives you just enough of a break for you to beat the bugs.

I think it works that way for the dogs too, when we first got them, both of them, they got bouts of vomiting a diarrhea, but after a few months of daily walks they are in fine shape. A little sleepier than some but in the pink otherwise.

And now that it is flu season I am going to keep up the walking. If it is the way I think it is I should be able to walk away from the flu. Just 20 or 30 minutes (depending on stops right girls) 3 times a day should do it. If it doesn't I could try an apple a day.

So where did those leashes go...

Randy

Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt

2007-10-28T11:18:00.000-06:00

"You load 16 tons and what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt"

Well except for the 16 tons that's me today. I upgraded the van yesterday. Traded the old on in on a leaseback with a lot fewer kilometers. We also stepped up a model to the Grand Caravan now that we don't have the truck I thought we could do with the extra hauling capacity. The fact is that the van can carry more than the Truck because you can get a full 4X8 sheet in the back of the Grand Caravan. My truck only had a 6 foot box and with the cap on it could haul less than the new van.

So some time tomorrow I will become the proud owner of yet another used car. Oops, "Pre-owned" vehicle. Ellen particularly likes that phrase and gets a kick out of it when the sales guys try to make a used car sound better than it is by using the old "pre-owned" when they know full well it means "used". But then again the difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman is the car salesman knows he's lying.

At any rate the new van is a 2007. A lease back with 30000KM. Hardly broke in. I have 2 years left on the bumper to bumper warranty and the balance of the 5 year 100000KM drive train warranty. And who ever took out the lease ate the biggest chunk of the depreciation. So I saved between 5 and 7 grand over the price of new maybe more. I don't know what that is in American dollars. Ha!

The salesman was also surprised that I was not concerned with the color. This is the bright ruby red that you see in all the dodge ads. Their flagship color. I just did not want a real dark color because it gets hot fast and we sometimes leave the dogs in the car. So the red is a change from the white I have had and not too dark I hope. It will look good with the red and white Alberta plates.

This van has the stow and go seating. On the plus side I can fold the seats away and have lots of room real quick, on the down side the exhaust is hung real low and might be a problem when I have to take a load to the dump or when we have our annual 2 foot dump of snow in March or April. But the sales guy was quick to assure me that they have not had any problems with it. We will see. I'm sure that with my luck I can have a problem.

As a lease back it has lots of toys, bells and whistles. That's how the lease system works. You lease all the toys you want then pay for it for a long time then trade it in so you can get more toys and bigger payments. The guy who comes along behind you gets a good deal on a "pre-owned" car with all the toys. Good for us Johnny-come-lately's. Not so good if you are keeping up with the Joneses.

My old van they gave me 3000 and change. That seems to be the going rate these days. But with 224000 KM or 140000 miles no one will give you much even though the thing is still basically sound. It's road worthy and I probably could have had another couple of years out of it. But without the truck it did not have the hauling capacity I wanted. You get to rely on a truck pretty quick. I don't know how I got by without it before. Not often but when you need it it is nice to have. And my service guy (Mike at the Certigard in Douglas Square always gives you a square deal I recommend him whenever I can) said that there were a few things coming up that were going to cost about a grand fairly soon. Just maintenance things. The idlers on the fan belt were making noise and the belt was due for replacement. The belt isn't so bad but the noisy idlers were stuck and would have had to have been replaced a 300 dollar touch. And the timing belt on the engine is inside the engine you usually get 150 - 200 000 kms on one of those before it goes. That is another 500 dollars. The Struts were due, 250 each minimum 2. So it seemed like time to look at putting the old van out to pasture. Nothing really wrong just wear and tear.

But I did give the guy a deal on the old one. I left all the dog hair in the back. There must be near 50 pounds. More than enough to knit a whole set of car seats! But can you imagine he was ungrateful. He actually complained about it. Just goes to show you he doesn't know what a real treasure he has there. Imagine genuine beagle hair seat covers a rare prize indeed! Just like the ones in my old van and the truck when I sold it.

On the edge of my seat waiting for the new van....

Randy

What a Way to Start The Day

2007-10-26T18:31:00.000-06:00

And I missed it all. Well not all maybe but the exciting part, the part with all the action, the part where the car went flying and spinning. But Jim sure didn't, though I bet he wishes he did. On his way to work he had a fender bender. Right outside the office right in full view of my window if I had been looking out at that moment but no, I had my nose in my work. I didn't even hear anything.

My buddy Jim was on his way to work. He was slowing down to make the turn into the parking lot fortunately, when an idiot ran a stop sign right in front of him. The idiot almost made it. Jim couldn't stop and hit the back end of his car. The idiot spun around twice and ended up crosswise across the road. I didn't see it but a young girl in a car right behind Jim did. We only saw the aftermath, that's Dave Z and me, and he was just as upset at missing it as I was probably more because he would have had a better view.

Now its not that we want a big accident but in the years we have been in the new office, we have seen the traffic increase on the road over 100 percent. We have watched the city police set up a regular radar trap at the bottom of the hill and nab speeders at will until they had more than enough donut money for the whole squad. We regularly hear squealing tires as we have yet another near miss. And when we finally have an accident involving one of our own no less we missed it.

So that was how Jim started the day with a bang not a whimper. And it caused a good deal of excitement for a while this morning. No injuries or gore, hell the idiot didn't even spill his coffee. Totaled his car most likely but kept the extra large double double. Now Jim gets to try and get his car fixed. It is drivable but all the plastic on the front, and these days that's a lot, and with insurance rates and accidents and shortages of help, etc. etc. Its going to be December before they can get Jim's car in.

And whatever good came out of it, Jim owes to his witness. Jim really didn't see the Idiot till it was too late but his witness saw him, she saw Jim hit his brakes, she saw the guy run the stop sign and more importantly she told the police and kept the Idiot on the straight and narrow when his story started to change to the police. It seems she though that it could have as easily been her rather than Jim and the Idiot was not going to get away with it. She saw to that.

So all and all it was an exciting morning. And I missed it.

Keeping a better eye out ...

Randy

Pet Tricks

2007-10-22T19:41:00.001-06:00

It was a "Dog Disneyland" weekend. Dog Disneyland is the off leash area where we take the girls for extra special long walks. They can go off leash because they would take off at the first scent but the other dogs come over to them so they still get socialized. This weekend was Indian Summer and the park was wall to wall dogs and people. The girls loved it. Two laps on Saturday and a quick lap on Sunday. It must have been Take a Beagle to the park day on Saturday because it looked like a beagle family reunion. There were Tricolors galore and even a black and white that could have been Dixie's brother. But he didn't have her speckled ears.

So we walked the girls in the sun for what may have been the last good weekend of the fall. The forecast is for colder weather so we took advantage of the sun and the colors.

Belle was her usual self. Happy go lucky. Just having fun. She had a good day but then that's Belle she always has good days.

Dixie had a bad day. She found a treasure. Well a treasure for her anyway. To you and I it was a stick. But to her it was a treasure. Still green about a half an inch thick and a foot long, just right for chewing. Laying there by the side of the path and no other dog had picked it up. So by all the rules of the dog park it was hers. She picked it up and was walking down the path carrying the treasure. She made it nearly three quarters of the way around as the proud owner of a stick. Tail up a big grin and a treasure. You could see it made her happy.

Now I know you are not supposed to attribute human characteristics to animals but you could just see it made her happy. And what happened next proved it. Just as we were coming along the river a golden lab cam galumphing along. The brute up and took her treasure without so much as a by your leave. Well Dixie was crest fallen. Her ears dropped, tail went down and she looked like she might cry. She was visibly disappointed. Fortunately the Lab's master made the cad give her treasure back. I think she could see how it had affected Dixie too. It put the spring right back in step to get her treasure back. But its a sad tale, she started playing with a pair of beagles dropped the treasure and forgot to bring it with her.

She found another chunk of wood but it was big and ungainly and it didn't have the cachet of the original treasure so she dropped it. But she can't wait till we go to dog Disneyland where she can find a another treasure.

Hoping for another Indian Summer weekend

Randy

On the Air

2007-10-20T16:15:00.000-06:00

Well with some help from my brother and remote access I am on the air with the new wireless network. It works slick. I don't have to hide in the front room tethered to my desktop and router. I can now sit up here in the kitchen and get right under foot. In fact I am in the way right as I type this. Normally you would have to be a beagle to get in the way this well. Ha! My my what technology can do.

It wasn't that tough either once I was able to turn over the set up to my brother. Thanks to high speed connections on both ends he was able to get it up and running no problem. I wonder what people who don't have tech support in the families do? Thanks for your help Ted. Hello to Duncan the only nephew I didn't talk to today. Hello Kim who I did not talk to at all either.

Thanks again Ted for the clever network name which must remain private (publishing it would not be a good idea). The wife's reaction when she heard it was "Oh Cute". Coming from her that is high praise indeed. She says South Park is "Just stupid" which is the worst slur she can direct at anything. I think we did a good job because when I look for a network on this thing mine does not show up but there are a couple of others that come up with what I think are the manufacturer's defaults. So we are safe and secure. No need to try to hack my network when there are 2 more with open doors.

Broadcasting from the heart of Calgary and well underfoot...

Randy

A Computer in Every Pot

2007-10-16T07:13:00.001-06:00

It would be nice to have a computer in every room of my house so I could use it where I want to be not where I have to be where the connections are. The desk top would stay put. But it has to it weighs enough to anchor the Titanic. Not very portable. But I have a laptop. Nice small light eminently portable. But It has to stay leashed to my router so unless I want to drag wires through the house I am stuck. Two computers on one desk (and no its not that desk yet) is silly.

Now I know there are wireless routers and hubs and I could set up a wireless network but I really don't know thing one about them. As Blanche DuBois said, "I have always relied on the kindness of strangers." especially for my serious techie stuff. Yeah I work in computers, and yeah I been doing it for more years than I care to remember but this new stuff is way past me.

Give me a database, I will normalize the sucker till hell won't have it. Program design modularity no problemo but I never was a hardware kinda guy. And all the new stuff is hardware. On the plus side they are making it so that Joe Sixpack can set up his own network in the basement so it can't be too hard. Heck if the pimply faced "You-want-fries-with-that" can do it so can I.

But what is the best way or the best gear to buy. Do I want or need the best of the best or will the best of the cheapest be a better option. I know I don't want the cheapest of the cheap because you do get what you pay for (to a point.) I know that the top dollar does not mean top product (case in point Microsoft there are better and cheaper tools out there). And maybe there is something to be said for being a lemming. If I get the most commonly used stuff maybe someone will know what is snafued if I run into problems.

I guess I will just have to call my brother the techie in Winnipeg and get the dope. You see he is a techie who plays with this stuff all day every day. For work and for fun. He has a job doing what he likes to do and he gets into it big time. He also does not have a big budget for his hobbies, three kids, a cat, a dog and a mortgage will do that to you. So he has a knack of getting the best bang for the buck. That is why his opinions are usually on the money.

He will also be able to help me set it up so that I am not the local hot-spot. We already have a few of those in the neighborhood. You can tell when there is some guy sitting outside a house on the street in his car with his lap top surfing the net. Saving big bucks hitting hot spots not having to pay for his Internet. Shrewd or what. Except that with gas at a buck something a litre its costing him just as much to pay to idle his car while he surfs as it would to get a connection at home. (Probably more since Mommy and Daddy might just pay for the connection to their basement.) I'm not selfish but I think if you want to surf it should be on your own dime. The net is like a utility but it is pay as you go. Also I would not be able to control what some geek would do over my connection so better to not have them on it.

Anyway, I think a wireless network in the house would be great. I use the Internet like a phone book now it would be nice not to be sent to Coventry every time I want to use it. It would also make it handy (just like the remote for the TV). So the plan for the weekend is to find out what I need for a wireless network. First stop Winnipeg I just hope it ain't snowing out there.

Now should this thingy be smoking like that and what were those sparks about?

Randy

Well Duh?

2007-10-03T15:30:00.000-06:00

So Washington state passed a law that makes it illegal to text message while operating a motor vehicle. A no brainer that was due. I cannot imagine trying to compose a text message in traffic. At least not without causing a major accident. But that is just me. Apparently, according to one woman interviewed about it, she does that all the time. And she has only had once close call. She also went on record that she would be opposed to to any such law here. Well of course she would. The fact that she texts while driving is an indicator of how good her decision making is, which is to say not very.

But just like cell phones these text addicts cannot go from A to B without being constantly in touch with everyone they know. Now I have to worry that some crack berry addicted moron is cruising down the street in and overpowered rice rocket texting a message to his buddies while careening at me. Nice. I think technology is making people more and more stupid. It is lowering the common denominator to record lows. If someone can take a piece of technology and devise the most stupid use or way to use it they will.

Take texting in the first place. It is a matter of using 10 keys to replace 50 keys on a keyboard on a screen that will hold 40 characters max, not the best platform but what the heck! And to become efficient you have to shrink the English language to the equivalent of a few hundred TLA's (three letter acronyms). Hey whack job you are holding a telephone! Call the person, talk that's what the device was built for! Oh no I forgot your phone is not for talking it is for listening to music playing games and taking pictures. Of course that is why you can't live without it.

I digress. To get back to the Washington state law. It is illegal to text while driving but you cannot be stooped for it. You can only be charged if you are doing something else wrong at the same time. Washington is being criticized for that saying it makes the law much less effective. But I disagree, the Washington law makers have a loop hole. You see to my way of thinking if you are text messaging while driving you are, by definition, driving with undue care and attention. Surely they have laws against that in Washington. And if they do, voila, there is the first thing they did wrong and you can now nail them for the secondary infraction. Pretty clever I think.

Not texting anyone behind the wheel...

Randy

Winding Down

2007-09-24T07:01:00.000-06:00

Well another summer has come and gone and life at the RV Camp is winding down. Some years you get a cold snap then an Indian summer and it is kind of nice but not this year. Its been cool and damp and cloudy all fall, well weekends anyway. The summer weekends were great but its been a dreary fall. Only one more week of that to go though. We are closing up the trailer next week. Then I am sure things will turn around.

I am having a deck built. for two reasons. First I have built decks before and they are not all that exciting and B I just can't do it for the price I am being quoted. The contractor is a fellow camper who has a contracting company in town here. He is getting on (ain't we all) and is winding down his company here. But he wants to keep his hand in so he will do small projects up at the park. And the difference between what he can do it for and what it would cost me is not significant enough for me to give up a couple of months of weekends. He will have it done in two days this week if the weather holds. He has already had the materials delivered. And good stuff it is too. As a contractor he can get better stuff for less than I can. So he is building my deck.

I won't be putting the roof on it until next year when I have a few bucks put away but we could use the deck. We can't put up fences according to the by laws so if we have a deck with a rail we will be able to let the girls out loose on the deck. They will probably like that more than being on the leash all the time. A deck will be nicer than the temporary stairs we have now too.

At any rate that will be going in this week. I have applied for the permits so the park is letting the construction go ahead It will likely be the last one this year or if it rains the first one next year. We are going to close it down next weekend so we may or may not have a deck. But we will see. I hope it is done this year as it would be nice to be able to use it first time out next year.

There have sure been a lot of changes up there starting with the skirting on the old trailer then the new one, then skirting that and finally the deck (maybe). But they're all changes for the better. I think they were all good decisions investment wise. The site is worth much more than we paid including the cost of the new trailer. If we had to sell we could easily recoup our investment plus. In the mean time we have a very nice unit to use.

And where, you may ask are the pictures? Well I did take my camera this weekend and the yard did not look like a scene from Twister. But it was dull and dreary and there are stacks of lumber every where and i still had not cleaned the bugs off the top of the trailer. (It came from somewhere near TO and there were bugs stuck to the top which had not been covered in transit so it got covered with bugs in transit. Not very attractive. I cleaned it up in the rain yesterday so they wont be hanging on it when I get out there next year. And Maybe I'll get pictures with the new deck next week. That is if I can remember the camera and if we have the time and If the weather cooperates and ...and... and...

Sitting here waiting for Indian Summer...

Randy

65" Short

2007-09-17T07:07:00.000-06:00

Well the skirt on the new trailer is done. As far as I could go, at any rate. I ran out of the vinyl sheeting 65 inches short of being done. Two more panels and I would have been done. It reminded me of the scene in "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" when Don Nott's character is running a sting of extension cords to a computer that was buried in a grave yard (a long story that I can't remember) and he came up short. Don said "You work and you slave and life up an kicks you in the teeth and you are five feet short of your goal!"

Oh well, Scott who sold me the package, is dropping off a couple of extra panels today. I will be able to finish up in about an hour or so next weekend.

And tomorrow I go to Didsbury to apply for a deck permit. Hopefully that will go smooth and we can have a deck in before the snow flies. I am getting it built. It is not that building a deck is so difficult it is just that with the price of materials what I can get it built for versus what I would pay is a difference of about $500. It is worth it to me to have someone build it for $500.

If I had the time and a helper I would do it myself. But my last helper, Ted, moved to Winnipeg. (And yes Ellen could help but it is not a good idea to work some projects with your wife especially if things go off the rails a bit. I could wind up in the dog house and even the Belle and Dixie would not join me out there.) Besides Ellen is quality control, on the skirting project she was the one who would remember how long each panel had to be because I would be thinking about other things by the time I go back to where I wanted to make the cut. She also was the one who kept track of when and where we needed to put in a "holey one" (vented panel). She also was the keeper of the tools, when I would wander off without the tape measure or pencil or tin snips she would bring them along because she knew I would need them. So you see she is a very good helper who's talents would be wasted schlepping 2X10's around.

So the deck will be contracted out. What will take them 2 days will save me about a month's worth of weekends next summer. Weekends that are better spent sitting on, barbecuing on and snoozing on a deck rather than working on one.

Why from our new deck we will be able to see Dixie run away in style. Yeah the little beggar took off an went for a tour of the woods. At 7:00 at night just as it is getting dark. We went out looking for her but we didn't see hide nor hair. Apparently there was loots to smell but nothing to track as that we would have heard. I though she was a goner. But at 9:00 she came back calm as you please, standing looking in the sliding door with a look that said "I'm back! Isn't it cookie time?" The clip on her leash had come undone on the harness. I don't know how or what she did to accomplish it but let me tell you I will be watching. So she was in my bad books Saturday night and Sunday. Belle was good and we should have listened to here when Dix took off, she set up a racket because she could not go too. I would have had her track Dixie but that would have had the three of us, Dix, Belle and me, all roaming round the woods without a clue. Bell is not a tracker, she is just a sniffer who goes where her nose leads. If it is after something she is supposed to find that is pure luck.

Home again 65 inches short of done...

Randy

Another Leisurely Weekend

2007-09-03T19:04:00.000-06:00

Well it was another great weekend at the leisure park. It must have been, I ache all over from installing nailers, building stairs and leveling the site. When I felt this sore the morning after(in the old days back at the U of R) I knew I had had a great night before. So I must have had a great weekend right? I have to go back to work to get a rest.

But we have pictures. Of the interior only I will explain why later.

This is the view from the kitchen looking back,
Looking toward the kitchen

The entertainment unit and china cabinet The glass cabinets are about 14 or 16 inches deep so they have lots of space. Its too bad we have nothing to display in them. We have old camping dishes and a camp kitchen kit. The fancy china is Corelle. Maybe we can make it look like a museum exhibit of old junk.

A close up of the cabinet. The wood is oak. But the grain is not as rough as you usually see. This is smoother more like cherry. All we have in the cabinet is the lantern that we use when we take the dogs for their morning constitutional. Its sort of a "flush light".

The bedroom. It looks a little crowded in this shot but it isn't really. You can walk around the bed and you can stand up. Not an option in the fifth wheel. Lots of light too from windows in either side. Flow-thru ventilation for those nights after the campfire bean and beer dinners.

Nope didn't get one of the bathroom but it has all the trappings.

We grabbed these shots on the way out so maybe they don't do it justice it was the end of a long weekend of working and we were both kind of tired. But I hope you get the idea.

A little skirting and clean up in the yard and I will show you the outside. Right now it looks like, well a trailer park just after the twister. The skirting material is lying around and the extra siding I had from the earlier project and lots of sawdust and wood and ... well you get the picture.

So the skirting this year, a deck next year and a roof on the deck the year after or that's the plan. But you know what Robbie Burns said about the best laid plans. The skirting project this spring was part of a plan too.

Sitting here aching from my leisurely weekend...

Randy

The New Trailer

2007-08-29T15:20:00.000-06:00

Well its here, its been here over a week now. The new trailer and what a difference a couple of pop outs and 8 more feet make. It is a beautiful piece of workmanship my compliments to General Coach.

And I don't have pictures yet. Last Tuesday when it came in I was going to take pictures while it was being set up and I wound up doing things and helping and didn't get around to it. This weekend I was going to take pictures but I got busy building steps and stowing stuff away and reorganizing and...and...and. And I did not get any pictures then either.

This weekend no promises.

My task for the weekend is to finish the second set of steps. They were built once but because it was raining and there are too many roots in my lot they have not been installed. I have to cut them down by one step because I can't dig them down. So for the time being we have just one set of steps coming into the sliding glass door.

So let me tell you about this trailer. It was bought basically sight unseen based on the floor plan. We looked at trailers like it but not this model. We knew this one had an entertainment center and some sort of storage at the end of the living room. Some sort indeed! It has 2 china cabinets with glass doors and deep shelves. They are mounted over more cabinets with solid doors all made of oak, really nice oak. The fit and finish are first rate. even better (according to one gentleman who is looking at park models too) than the top of the line units from this same company. In my opinion they are as good as the Citation line which is the next line up from this company and as good or better than the Breckenridge which is the top line from a competitor.

We were able to stow away everything that we had in the old trailer and still have storage space to spare. There are closets everywhere and that is a little problem that I will get too. But everything that filled the old trailer just melted away into the new one. It was magic.

The new bedroom is kind of plain so we will be able to hang some pictures in there. But the bed is comfortable (or maybe we were extra tired). The dogs each had a kennel in the front room and we weren't even tripping over them. We were able to fold out the hide-a-bed with out moving the kennels and still get by it.

The fridge is as big as ours at home and just as good a quality. The stove is a small gas stove like the old trailer but it is all that we should need. It has the same oven as the old trailer which should bake as well.

The bathroom has a regular city toilet and twice as much space as the old unit. That is a real treat.

I like it, the wife likes it, the dogs like it but they don't like that they can't sit on the new couch (sorry doggies), so I think we'll keep it. The salesman who sold it to us was equally impressed and want to get one like ours to keep on his lot as a show model. He also wants to come back and take pictures of ours to put on his web site. I think he liked it too.

It does fill the lot. We could have put a 38 foot unit on the lot but we decided to only go 33 ft. and it is a good thing we did. we would have had to take down a bunch of trees to get something bigger in. This is tight as it is. We could not have got this floor plan in a 38 either and the front kitchen I think, really makes the difference. I am glad we stayed with this size.

There is nothing that we don't like about it. Oh the problem with having many closets? Well it is out of sight out of mind. We forgot a couple of things because they were put away in the closets. In the old trailer it was not a problem everything was left out because there was no place to put it. So it was there staring at you when you went to load the car. With the stuff in the closet we only missed it when we got home. It's a problem but I think we can learn to live with it.

Can't wait to get back up there...

Randy

Back From Vacation

2007-08-15T07:26:00.000-06:00

And feeling like I was never gone. Why is it that the vacation relaxation spill over is only about a day or two. It seems like all the benefit of a vacation is gone within a day or two of getting back to work. All that relaxation you felt gone. All the stress relief gone. Maybe its the 400 plus emails that were here to greet you. Or maybe its the people who were here who have been working on problems and issues who just want to off load them on the first happy face they see. What a downer.

Maybe the problem is that the vacation was too good. I know mine was. Some of the best fishing in years. No it was not having the boat back up an running after two years without it. It was good fishing. I know a bad day's fishing beats a good day's work any time but when you can reel in your limit in an hour, when they are lining up to get on the hook, well that is just a good day's fishing. When you get a hit on the first cast of the year that is good fishing. When you cast once an get a fish release it and get another on your second cast that is good fishing. And that is how good the fishing was. We even got a couple of Pickerel (Walleye).

The family reunion was a success too. I met cousin's of the wife's that I had not met before. She had not seen them since she was 11 or 12 well before my time. The weather was HOT and the beer cold. The food was fantastic and yes we ate too much. We visited lots and got caught up with people we had not seen since the last reunion 12 years ago. Everyone got along. The only disappointment I saw was the young boy (wife's cousin's daughter's boy) who wanted to get a picture of the hummingbird. He waited a couple of hours to get it and the bird just did not show up that night. Well maybe I can make it up to him. I got some really nice shots a few days later that I can e-mail out. (No they won't be posted for a while as I am still rebuilding my primary system since my hard drive crashed.)

I got acquainted with my niece. She is 6 and a going concern. She was my buddy because we had the dogs. You see she can't have a real dog because her brother is asthmatic. So when she got the chance to walk, feed and play with real dogs she did not let it go to waste. The girls were not lonely while she was around. And they got their vegetables every day. The green Milk bone treats are vegetable flavored and she dug through the bin each day to make sure each dog got at least one vegetable flavored one. She sure hated to leave the dogs when she had to go they got hugged and kissed and "good-bye'd" twice. I think the girls missed her

All in all it was one of the better vacations I have ever had. There were snafu's too. Like falling in the mud at La Colle falls, and having to get the vent fan replaced in the van. There were too many "wake weenies" on the lake so you were taking your life in your hand in the canoe on weekends. But on the plus side the new canoe rack worked great and the girls turned out to be good sailors in the canoe. They did not like sailing in the pontoon boat.

What's that? What's a "wake weenie"? Power boat operators who don't know or care to learn the rules of the road for boating. Their IQ is inversely proportional to the boat engine horse power. They roar around all day creating large wake waves. The one benefit of the preponderance of wake weenies is that very few fishermen use the lake any more and as a result the fishing is really good.

So why does it feel like I was never away?

Getting stressed again as usual....

Randy

Beating the Heat

2007-07-23T13:08:00.001-06:00

It's HOT. Africa Hot. 32 degrees celcius. Good thing it is a dry heat. No Humidity to add to the discomfort. Too hot to even take the dogs for a walk. It's a good thing our new trailer will have AC. Yeah we did it. Got tired of being debt free and took the plunge again. but at least this time the loan is with a bank I deal with so its not all that bad. I won't lose track of it anyway. I will be reminded every time I check my banking on line.

So what have we got or will we get - a 33 ft park model with 2 pop outs. Since it was already built we had to take the Air conditioning option, in this heat it was an easy sell. It will be more like a small cabin than a trailer. It has a bedroom with a real door so the next time the brother in law stays and wants to get frisky we can close the door and let them. But be warned Mr B the dogs are not used to noises in the next room and may set up a howl.

It still just sleeps 4 but that's enough. We have never had too much company in the old one. 4 adults inside and a tent outside for the kids. Hey you're camping aren't you!

The kitchen is at the front and will face the road. That way anyone walking by will not be looking right into the living room (which is the second bedroom when the hide a bed is out), Also we won't be looking at the road all the time but will be able to look out a window when we are cooking. The living room looks out on the trees. The bed room is in the back where it is quiet.

The kicker though, is a real bathroom, someplace big enough to let me change my mind in, with a real toilet not a camper toilet. And a shower that is usable for something more than a bird bath.

And lets not forget the Air conditioning that I was forced to get and I will really appreciate cause it is HOT. Africa Hot.

Sweating like a stuck pig...

Randy

Trailer Number 3

2007-07-09T15:32:00.000-06:00

Done. The skirting is finally done so what are we doing to celebrate! Ha! Looking at park models. For those of you not familiar with the term it is a mobile home that you set up and just leave in one place. Like we are doing right now with the trailer. But I think that went out the window for a year or so anyway. Actually we a looking at a "park trailer" same thing only narrower with slide outs. The sales-double-speak-people are getting pretty good with the weasel words.

We won't be able to afford it having paid out the house and paying out the trailer loan too. The trailer originally cost us 6 grand more than I remembered. And when we amortized it over 15 years (10 years ago) it was a good deal. Now we want to upgrade but we still owe way too much. It is costing nearly a hundred dollars a month in interest. So we are going to scrape our scheckles together and pay it off. They have got enough interest from me. They don't pay bugger all but sure sock it to ya on a loan so we are getting out from under. It will mean that the upgrade will have to be put off a while but we have time.

The sales guy, in addition to wanting to be my best friend, says we want to avoid the price increase for next year. What that means is he need the cash flow this year. Sorry about that new best friend. By this time next year we will still be ahead of the game. In the mean time the Lotto has to pay someone every once in a while and my fingers are firmly crossed. If we wait in 3 years we can be back where we were cash wise and not have any debt. That might just be the best plan.

If we do want to get into a park model this year I might consider selling the truck and trailer as a package. I put just about 5000 km's on the truck in the past 2 or 3 years. And only because I made 2 trips to Kelowna with it to help folks move. Do I need a truck, yeah it is a nice to have but I don't need a 3/4 ton 'cause I won't be pulling a fifth wheel. So I could sell the truck and trailer as a package. Then we could go for a park model this year.

Lots to think about.

Sitting here with a very sharp pencil...

Randy

Trailer Project

2007-07-04T13:11:00.001-06:00

Well I'm almost done the skirting project. I would be done but I can't remember things. Didn't make sense? Well you see if I would have remembered my belt sander I would be done. The door was the last thing I made and I made it just a bit too tight. A few minutes with the belt sander and it will fit just perfectly. But as luck would have it I forgot to bring the sander up on the weekend so because I can't remember things I am not done.

Technically since the door does close and I can lock the storage compartment I am done. Memory or no. But I would like to be truly finished with the i's dotted and the t's crossed. (That may have to wait until I get my old storage bin moved in and the trailer storage compartment cleaned out of peanuts and squirrel nests.) So I probably will not be finished this weekend. It's Stampede time. So we are only going out for the night on Friday and coming back Saturday. Its tradition to go Stampeding the first Sunday of Stampede just me, the wife, and 150,000 of our closest friends. But who am I to argue with tradition.

But back to the project, now that it is done-ish, and since the mortgage is paid off we have started to look at park models again. A larger trailer would be nice. The extra room that comes with pop outs would sure make a difference. and now that I know I can build the skirting, well a new trailer would be very nice with a deck maybe with railings so we can let the dogs out. But I could do that for this trailer too. Maybe next year. This year I can putter around getting my storage space squared away...

Now lets see will those chairs fit in that corner?...

Randy

Sick as a Dog

2007-06-26T09:31:00.001-06:00

Dixie was sick this morning. Fine last night, roaring around, instigating, chasing Belle, all in all fine and healthy. This morning when I went to unhook her to let her out she was tangled in her lead. When I lifted her paw to untangle her she howled like I was killing her. Her stomach was hard and she would howl if you pressed it even lightly. She was listless, did not want to be on the walk particularly. She could not jump up on the couch without howling or whining. You'd have thought she was dying.

She ate her breakfast but with not the same relish that she normally puts into it. She beat Belle in the race that eating has become but not by her usual margin. So something was wrong but it was not fatal. I went to work. I called the emergency vet from the office. I described the symptoms and they said bring her in. They sounded pretty concerned so I asked my boss for the morning off to deal with the poor sick dog. I have lots of vacation time left so it was no problem.

I came home and she was eager to get outside. I thought it was because it was nice out. But I was wrong. Now, I had not seen her poop since Saturday night (Having to pick up after her you keep an eye out for those things.) It is now Tuesday morning. She has been eating healthy for the last 2 days. And now as I am waiting on her to take her to the vet she starts to go. And go, and go. And when she is done she seemed to be perked up. So I put off going to the vet to see if she gets better on her own. Her belly is not distended anymore and also not tender. I can pick her up and she doesn't howl. So it seems that her problem was.. well, she was just full of it. Now I grant you it was dump that probably made her pants fit better but I gave up half a day of vacation to watch the dog take a dump.

Bags and pooper scooper at the ready...

Randy

Light at the End of the Tunnel

2007-06-19T19:09:00.000-06:00

Well we did it, for the second time. Okay get your mind's out of the gutters. We paid off the mortgage. We are mortgage free for the second time. Last time it lasted about 3 years before we added on to the house and bought our RV lot. I wonder how long I can hold out this time before I drag myself back in to a financial quagmire.

We didn't owe that much, we had the savings to cover it and they were not making much interest so we decided to up the return on our savings by paying off the mortgage. Net effect we went from a net loss of 2 1/2 percent to 0 percent return cause the money was spent. So while we are making nothing we are saving 2 1/2 percent (Since the term deposits were only earning 3 percent and the mortgage was 5 and 1/2 ) Now we can save the money we were paying on the mortgage and invest it theoretically.

Anyway it is good to see no loans on the books. We are in the black. The light at the end of the tunnel was not just another train on the same track. Can you imagine?! So what to do with all our lucre. I don't know but it probably won't earn very much. But we do have a very valuable asset free and clear. This house is a two storey, originally 1000 square feet or so that we added on to to bring it up to 1300 sq feet.

Original purchase price $72,000 in 82 at 18 percent (where the hell is that rate now that I have savings eh?) Paid off the first time in 94. Then we added on for 50000 and bought the RV lot for another 20000 or so. so between the two properties we have 140000 invested. The interest we paid is, frankly money down the rat hole so we won't even go there. I learned now that I can sell the house for almost 400K (Yep it's Calgary home of house prices that make Torontonians nostalgic for the 80's). The lot is probably good for another 50-75K. So that makes it nearly half a mil if I wanted to be homeless. Am I a lucky investor or what? That's it dumb luck. Don't let anyone tell you that they planned it in the real estate market. It is all of us that are in my positions who are saying how the heck do I get my money out of this? If I could figure that out I would be clever.

I do know one guy who has or is sort of doing it. A buddy at work is selling out an moving back to Saskatchewan. He will be out from under (way out because his house doubled since he bought it) he will have enough to get a very make that very very nice place in Regina and rather than being unemployed as he thought he would be the company will let him set up and work his same job out of our Regina branch. (Computers are clever things he can work there live cheap and do the same job.) And it wasn't his idea, he only wanted to go back to be close to elderly parents and family. He was planning to quit and look for a job when he got there.

So that's the solution I guess. Sell out here, move back to Saskatchewan a go there and take a job or better yet the same job. Well Saskatchewan is nice but I think I'll wait till the company opens a warehouse in Lahaina Maui.

Still working on Freedom 85...

Randy

Skirting the Issue

2007-06-11T07:45:00.000-06:00

Well it was anything but leisurely at the Tall Timber Leisure Park this weekend. I was, with the help of brother in-law Dave, able to build the skirting/storage compartment under the hitch of my trailer. Well most of it anyway. I still have to install the door and side the outside with Vinyl siding. You would think that it would be straight forward now wouldn't you but it turned out that each side was a custom build.

The back wall was only 2 feet tall but had to be built completely and sided before it went in because I could not picture myself trying to crawl under the trailer and finish it. (Well, I could picture it and believe me it was not pretty.) Then the side walls which you would think would be similar weren't because one has a door and the other is solid, so the framing is different. And the front was different again. But we got it framed up in Saturday. And my wife and I were able to get it sheeted on Sunday. Next weekend we will finish it if the rains hold off.

W e did manage to keep in mind that it had to be built to be dismantled. And it is modular. Ten screws and the front wall is off. 6 more and the back is off and the trailer is ready to move. The siding will overlap into the corner bead but will not be attached to the end wall so that when the wall is unfastened the siding will slide free.

But my estimating skills are sure out to lunch. I bought a third too much sheeting, (two sheets can go back. And about that much too much 2X4, six of them to go back. I also have an extra 2X2. Oh well money back in my pocket and a good reason to go back to the hardware store. I don't need anything else I just want to go back to the hardware store. (It's a GUY thing.)

Here are some pictures. The before:

And the after: (OK so not quite after. How about the half way after.)

There is sure going to be a big expanse of white. I hope we don't go snow blind when we are lounging by the camp fire. I bet I would have enough room in there to store a good stack of fire wood and keep it real dry. I will have to see how much space is left after the little storage bin, the chairs and the table go in. We will wonder how we lived without it.

This is something that I probably should have done a few years ago before the squirrels found the storage compartment. But It'll be done soon and I can clean out the compartment and things will be good as new. Everyone will be happy and the squirrels, well who cares. as the tree huggers say they were here before we were so they should know how to fend for themselves.

Only one problem with the weekend was that I was so tired Saturday night I missed the excitement. I completely slept through the wildlife tour. A moose came trampling in off the river and marched straight through the park. And I slept through the Fireworks. A couple of newbies to the park, who didn't use the brains God gave an ice cube, had a fire works war and were back in the woods launching fireworks at one another. They must have thought they were in Gaza or something. The RCMP were called to do the peace keeping in Gaza West. The things you miss when you conk out at 9:00

Ready to hang siding...

Randy

PS: Remember a few posts back I mentioned my niece's little girl Jordan well here is a picture of the whole family, big brother Blake, Momma Samantha, Papa Rob, and the tiny one is Jordan.

Summer's Back

2007-06-05T17:33:00.000-06:00

Summer's back. And we were up to the trailer for the weekend. I had to plant those 15 trees Perry gave me. And I did manage to find space for them all. Now if it rains they will be off to a grand start. The trailer park is coming back to life. It sure makes a difference when all the lots are full. There were about half the people there last weekend. Not too crowded nice and quiet. I slept like a log and so did Ellen and the dogs. (The snoring from all of us I suspect was just the proof. I wonder if that voilates the quiet time rules?) It is just so relaxing up there.

The river is high and fast right now and brown. It is cleaning out all the gullies all the way back to Saskatchewan Crossing. If there are fish in it they are eating dirt and going on a the Red Deer's version of a Nantucket Sleigh Ride.

We will be back again next weekend. I have a project. Now much as i like to kick back and do nothing when I am up there i have to do this project. I am going to skirt under the hitch part of the trailer all the way back of the front storage compartment. Hopefully when it is done the squirrels will not be able to get in. Someone was feeding them, probably last fall, because the front compartment is loaded with peanuts. So I am walling the little beggars out.

After that I think it is fair game to kill any that do come back. They can go live with the vermin feeders. Isn't it interesting that the "tree huggers" who get upset when you threaten vermin are the same dough heads who feed the blighters. Which fortunately for my side results in them becoming dependent on people who are not there for them through the winter. Result dead vermin.

They also argue that the squirrels were there first and people who don't like them should learn to live with them. But I ask you, where in their evolution did they find peanuts in Alberta before? Nowhere that's where. But as I said feeding them is good for my side. Well hopefully the problem will be solved by the end of the weekend. For me at least. For the squirrels they have new problems.

Still figuring the details on the skirting...

Randy

PS Better bring the camera for before and after photos. Keep your fingers crossed that it doesn't rain on Saturday. (But the trees can drink their fill during the week)

Sick Puppy

2007-05-24T07:42:00.001-06:00

We took a little trip on the weekend. The Victoria Day Weekend is the first camping weekend of the year and the first weekend at the trailer for us usually. But this year my mother in law is hosting a family reunion. So we went up to her cabin at Emma Lake and helped her get it in shape by steam cleaning the carpet. Fortunately we did not miss anything because it was wet an dreary all weekend. It even snowed at the lake the night before we arrived.

While we were there Belle ate or drank something that did not agree with her, and she's been a sick puppy ever since. Now being sick is not a problem everyone gets sick, but she needed to be let out every 4 hours. And she is a Beagle and the yard at the cabin is not fenced so you have to take her out on the lead. At 3:00 am, there I was, three nights running, holding the dog while she tried to poop. She felt that she had to go so out we went. The Victoria day weekend is also getting a reputation as a "Party" weekend at the lake. And I'm sure the RCMP would have wondered what kind of party I was up to at that hour clad as I was in a jacket, runners and fruit of the looms holding a dog. Fortunately they (nor anyone else) came by. (Hey it was O-dark Hundred for Pete sakes.) Had anyone come along I think they would have wondered who was the sick puppy.

We got home two days ago and now Belle is on the road to recovery. She was examined by the vet (quite rudely she would say) and given antibiotics and Pepto Bismal to settle her stomach and she slept through the night last night. She is off food for two days and she is not sure she will survive that. What's more she gets to watch the other dog eat when she can't. That is really cruel and unusual punishment. She will be over that at supper time tonight.

It will take a lot more time to clean up what the really sick puppies did. There was a bush party at the lake (well a few actually) and to celebrate the attendees drove around and overturned garbage bins, pulled out traffic signs, smashed things, tore down cabin signs and generally behaved like a bunch of sickos. Why they have to be so destructive is beyond me. It happened up at the lake and it happened in the back country here as well from what the papers say.

What is it about nature than makes people stupid? In Saskatchewan they were not permitting alcohol into the parks to prevent that sort of thing so the rowdies moved out of the park into the private cabin and camping areas. Out here they went into the back country where the rangers did not patrol and left litter debris and destruction (including burned out cars) in the wilderness. Sure it was a long winter and sure the weather wasn't the best last weekend so burn up buddy's car that will make things better. How were those morons raised?

My sick puppy will be better in a day or two. The ignorant jerks that caused the destruction will never get better they will just get more money so they can destroy more. It makes you wonder who the sick puppies really were. And by the way calling them sick puppies just gives dogs a bad name.

Randy

Baby Boom

2007-05-11T21:50:00.000-06:00

Last week we had a mini baby boom around here. A friend from work and his wife had a baby girl on Friday and my niece had a baby girl on Sunday. Quang and Paula had Hillary 6 pounds 6 and a half ounces and Sam's little Jordan Danielle came early on a Sunday morning at seven pounds 8 ounces.

Two little girls at the same place (Foothills Hospital) and just about the same time. But how different. Quang is my age his wife of just over 4 years is 26. A 24 year age difference. And now they have a second child. Their first Ted is just about 3. To start a family at this age, he had more moxie than I have. We are old enough to be grand parents and then some. Well its like I told him, it will work out well by the time the kids are out of diapers he will be back in them. He will be in his seventies by the time they are through college.

Now Sam is just about 23, this is her second one too. Her "little" boy Blake is 2 going on three and a going concern. (I call him Hoss after Hoss Cartwright whom he resembles physically and personality wise.) Now her family is complete with "little sister" Jordan. Sam and Rob are just starting out. There kids will be on there own by the time they reach my age.

Those two little girls will have very different lives and to think they came in so much together. It will be a different life, but hopefully one with promise for both of them.

Good luck Hillary and Jordan and all the best in the world to you.

Randy...

Arbor Day

2007-05-08T07:27:00.000-06:00

Apparently it was Arbor day recently. You remember arbor day from back when you were in school. Everyone got a tree, went home, planted it and watered it faithfully for a week then let it die. Well my neighbor is a school custodian and he dropped off a bundle of 15 little trees and I will be taking them up an planting them on my RV lot. Up there they will be on their own but they will have lots of large cousins around. But that is not the point of this post.

My point is with all the interest in a green society and ecology why isn't arbor day a big deal any more. Planting trees should be promoted more than it is. I suppose it is a reflection of the time and the instant society we live in. Time was planting a tree and nurturing it through the years until it could stand on its own was important. Now people want instant landscape. They do not have time to work to make the tree grow. It is easier to buy full grown or trees and just stick them in. Then let it take care of itself. People are too busy and they want instant gratification.

Arbor day could be a good example on a couple of fronts. First it would be good for the environment to plant trees. And second it could teach children and people in general the value of patience and persistence. When we were kids Arbor day was a big deal we looked forward to it and I did try to care for my little tree for more than a few days but I think I planted them in the wrong place where they would get scorched by the sun or winter killed or trampled bu that was poor planning. But in this day and age where the environment is foremost in many people's mind It might be time to make a big deal of Arbor day again.

Thanks for the trees Perry. I will give them a good home and maybe in a few years they will be something to see.

Got my spade and my water bucket and I'm off to plant my forest...

Randy

A Companion/Accpomlice For Belle

2007-04-26T07:01:00.000-06:00

She's working out so I guess she'll stay. "Who?" you ask. Dixie the new beagle we adopted from the Humane society. I did not like it that Belle was alone all day so we kept an eye out for a companion for her. And about three weeks ago we got one. Another Beagle. They are pack dogs aren't they. She was sort of on a trial basis, then she got sick and nearly died (a combination of a virus and stress) but now she is settling in quite well.

The society said she was three years old but others who have seen her and examined her put her age at 1.5 to 2 years max. She had a home once because she is trained. She surprised me the other day by doing roll overs when I was trying to get her to just lie down. She barks, (as much as beagles bark, more of a howl) when people go by the yard (not entirely a bad thing) and she keeps Belle good company. She is a smart little dog, kind of on the thin side. Too thin for my eye. She makes Belle look like a little fat dog which she may be a little. She was skittish and nervous. She's not as trusting of people as Belle is. (Belle's motto "I never met a potential source of snacks that I didn't like!"). But she is settling in.
So there they are Belle and Dixie, a couple of angels with dusty halos!

Well its walk time, now where did I put those bags?

Randy

The Rocket Car Chapter 9

2007-04-16T19:08:00.000-06:00

COVERUP

So there you go. That's the whole story of the Rocket Car,
or at least the part that I was involved with. I never went back
to the mine, and as far as I know, neither did Jimmy. We
discussed what we'd do about the wreckage while driving back to
town, but nothing we came up with seemed to make a lot of sense.
The road running past the mine wasn't very well-travelled, but we
knew that the only reason we hadn't been spotted was because
the whole thing happened so early in the morning. If we went back
to the site later that day, there was a fair chance we'd be
spotted. Of course we'd taken that chance before, especially
during the brake test the day before. But then we had the option
of rolling the car into the mine shaft and getting out of there
if anyone seemed curious. And at the very worst, we'd get nailed
for putting train wheels on a Chevy, then sticking it on an
abandoned track. I'm pretty sure there no law against THAT.

But now there was a very obvious piece of forbidden
military hardware in plain view, and no easy way to get it out of
there. The thing that kept repeating over and over in my head as
I drove back to town was that paragraph in my Dad's auction
paperwork. The one dealing with possession of controlled military
hardware. Specifically, the part detailing prison sentences
and outrageous fines. It was then that I started to think that
the best way to handle the whole thing would be to not handle it
at all. Pretend it never happened, and hope nobody connected the
car wreck to us.

And that's exactly what we did.

Actually, timing and nature lent a hand. The following day
was Easter Sunday, and there was no way Jimmy or I were going to
avoid spending it with our families. And even if we wanted to, it
wasn't a good day to be screwing around out in the desert. Late
Saturday night a windstorm kicked up, strong enough to make the
local TV stations interrupt programming with traveler's
advisories in our area. Nothing very odd about that, not in our
area in the springtime. Actually it was a pretty common
occurrence. But this time I was thrilled to hear the reports.
High winds and blowing sand could only serve to obscure the signs
of what we'd been doing in the desert that morning, and the
fewer signs, the better. When I got up on Easter morning, I saw
patches of sand that had blown around on the street in front of
the house, and was encouraged by the sight. If sand was blowing
across the streets in the middle of town, it must've really been
kicking ass in the desert. Later that morning I saw Jimmy at
church, and even though we weren't alone long enough to
talk about anything, we exchanged several Significant Looks.

And the next day, Jimmy went back to college.

I went back to work at the scrapyard, and I have no idea
what Beck and Sal did. I just spent the next few days trying to
act as normal as possible, expecting a police car to show up at
the yard any minute. But curiosity finally got the best of me,
and I called Beck on Wednesday. We met that night at the same bar
where we'd discussed brakes for the Rocket Car, and Beck told me
he HAD been out to the mine, actually a couple of times. Once he
even brought a camera and took a few pictures, because what
he saw was so damned funny.

Funny?

I couldn't figure out what he could think was funny about
the whole thing, since I was there when it happened. But he
explained it to me, and afterwards I had to agree, it WAS kind of
funny. The storm that blew through the area on Saturday night had
indeed eliminated most of the signs of what we'd been doing near
the mine over the past few days. The tire tracks made by his
Dad's pickup were completely eliminated, and the railroad tracks
themselves were almost re-buried. But the Rocket Car was still
exactly the same as it was when we left, ass end hanging out of a
pile of rubble with a rocket sticking out of it. I'd hoped Beck
was going to tell me that drifting sand had covered the remains
of the car, but it hadn't.

I was waiting for the funny part, but it didn't seem to be
coming.

Finally Beck reminded me of what the scene looked like to
a person driving TOWARD the crash site. I had to visualize it,
since I'd never actually seen it. You drive down the stretch of
road, toward a butte that used to have a mine entrance in the
side of it. But now there IS no mine shaft, just the rear end of
a car sticking out of the side of the butte.

And, of course, the twin skidmarks on the highway where
Beck's truck leaped onto the roadway. Skidmarks pointing directly
at the Rocket Car. Just like you'd see in a Roadrunner cartoon.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

AFTERMYTH

There you go.

Now, I have to admit one thing, I didn't start hearing any
Rocket Car rumors right away. Nobody did. I didn't see any
articles in the paper, the cops never came to visit anyone (not
that I'm aware of, anyway) and I never went back to see what
happened with the Rocket Car.

Explanations?

Your guess is as good as mine.

The town I've been talking about isn't a huge one, but
it's not small enough so that everyone knows each other's
business, either. The road wasn't a busy one, and although the
Rocket Car was visible to someone driving past, they could easily
miss it. All I can say for sure is that whoever discovered the
car sticking out of the butte didn't make a big fuss about it.
And I'm pretty sure someone DID discover it. I saw Beck once more
after our meeting in the bar, at a Memorial Day party a few
weeks later. He was pretty drunk at the party, wanted to talk
about the whole thing, and I had a bitch of a time getting him to
a private spot so I could listen to what he had to say. He said
he'd gone out to the crash site a few days earlier, and the
Rocket Car was gone.

I said "What do you mean, gone?"

But "gone" is just what he meant. He drove past the spot,
couldn't see the car from the highway, and went down the slope to
take a look. When he got there, he couldn't find any trace of the
car ever having been stuck in the mine entrance. All I could
think at the time is that the rubble-pile must have eventually
shifted to the point where it covered the car completely. Beck
seemed doubtful when I suggested it, but like I said, he
was pretty drunk at the time. He said it looked more like the car
was pulled out of the hole and taken away, but that's a bunch of
bullshit. It has to be. To start with, none of us were there long
enough for the scene to form a lasting impression. We looked at
the wreckage for maybe fifteen minutes before we were back in
Beck's truck and hauling ass out of there. Maybe Beck saw enough
so that he could tell if the car had been moved, but I wouldn't
be able to tell.

On the other hand...

Later on I started thinking about what would have happened
if the county sheriff had driven by and seen the Chevy sticking
out of a rockslide. Or even if someone had called the sheriff and
reported it. See, the abandoned mine was far enough from town so
that it probably wasn't inside the city limits, which means that
it wouldn't be the business of the city cops. And folks who don't
live in town learn real quickly who they're supposed to call when
there's trouble. So if the site was spotted by someone
who didn't live in town, chances are they'd have called the
sheriff. Of course it MIGHT have been the business of the State
Police, but I don't know anyone who'd call the State Police in a
situation like this. Most people wouldn't even know HOW to call
the State Police. Oh, I'm sure a trooper would've stopped to
check it out if he'd spotted it while driving past, but the
troopers mainly stick to the Interstates, occasionally
pulling into one of the towns along the way for donuts or coffee.
No, if some law-enforcement outfit stopped to investigate the
crash site, it almost certainly would've been the county sheriff.

So what would HE have done?

I honestly don't know. I've got no idea if they have set
procedures for dealing with stuff like this (yeah, Section 203.1
of the Civil Code, Disposal of Jet-Propelled Railroad Equipment),
but the sheriff's office wouldn't have called the city cops
unless they HAD to. My Dad always hinted that there was some
animosity between the two departments, the city cops
considering the sheriff's department a bunch of hick-assed Deputy
Dawgs, and the sheriff's department thinking the city cops were a
gang of self-important pricks. And neither group liked the State
Police, who, by all accounts, ARE self-important pricks. If
someone from the sheriff's department came along the wreckage of
the Rocket Car, I doubt like hell they'd have told any
other law-enforcement agencies unless they HAD to. And until they
found out if there was a body inside the car, there really
wouldn't BE any reason to share the info. So their next logical
step would be to find out if there was anyone inside the car.

How?

Dig through the rubble? That's about the only way it could
be accomplished. But it sure as hell isn't a job for the county
sheriff and a couple of deputies with shovels. It would take
heavy equipment and people who knew what they were doing. On the
other hand, why go through the trouble? When you see a car that
appears to be plugged directly into a mountainside, you don't
even assume that there are any survivors. I try to think of
what the sheriff would've done if he'd come across the crash
site, and it occurs to me that the first thing he'd have seen was
what appeared to be a rocket nozzle sticking out of the back end
of a car. If I were the sheriff, I'd have immediately called the
Army base where Dad and I got the JATOS in the first place. Who
else would be qualified to deal with such a thing? NASA? Evel
Knievel?

And if the Sheriff DID call the Army, and they had some
EOD people come out and take a look, anything could've happened
next. The military bomb-squad might have taken one look at the
expended rocket, told someone at the base to send out a truck
with a winch, and they may have yanked the car right out of the
rubble and taken it away. After they determined that there was no
corpse in the car, it wouldn't be the sheriff's business anymore.
Or anyone else's.

Case closed.

But I never did any serious investigation of these
possibilities, for two reasons. One, I didn't want to do any
snooping that might look suspicious. Two, I didn't hang around
town very long after that. Two weeks after the test of the Rocket
Car, I drove to.... the big-ish city I mentioned earlier, and
took the ASVAB test. That's the test they give you before
you join the military. And a few weeks after talking to Beck for
the last time, I shipped out for Navy basic training.

Before you make any assumptions about my joining the Navy
to escape the repercussions of the Rocket Car incident, let me
tell you that I absolutely did NOT. Get that thought right out of
your head. I'd been thinking about it for a long time, and if the
Rocket Car had anything to do with my joining the Navy, it was
just to give me a gentle nudge in a direction I
was already heading. Hey, take a look at the situation I was in.
I was 22 years old, living with my folks, and working for my Dad
in a junkyard at the edge of a shitty little town in the desert.
Not exactly A Future With Promise. I guess college was a
possibility, but Dad didn't really make enough to pay my way, and
I didn't feel like re-paying student loans until I was 100 years
old.

Why the Navy? Well, because of that song by the Village
People, of course.

No, no, just a little joke there. Don't EVEN take
that seriously. Actually, there was never any question about
which branch of the service I wanted to join. I joined the Navy
because I wanted to get as far away from the desert as I possibly
could. Some people grow up around sand and scrub and get to like
it, they can't imagine living anywhere else. Some (like me) take
a look around and realize they've always hated it, and didn't
want to hang around for another minute. For awhile I thought I'd
be considered an oddball when the rest of the sailors found out
where I came from, but I found out it wasn't as uncommon as I
assumed. Take a look at a list of the home towns of all Navy
members, and you'll see that quite a few of the boys come from
Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and southern Texas. Joining the Navy
to get away from the desert turns out to be a pretty common
practice.

Anyway, I went home on leave whenever I got a chance, and
saw Jimmy whenever I went back. On my second visit, I found out
that Beck and Sal had hauled stakes and split for California a
few months after I'd left for boot camp. Not on foot, either.
They'd stolen their Dad's monster pickup, but rumor had it their
Dad never even swore out a complaint about the theft of
his truck. Maybe he figured it was a small price to pay to get
rid of his sons for good. Or maybe the truck wasn't empty when
they jumped in and headed west. Their Dad was still up to unknown
hanky-panky out in the desert somewhere, hanky-panky that quite
possibly involved the distribution of illegal vegetation from
Mexico. Beck and Sal may have been waited for an occasion where
Dad brought some work home with him, and headed for California
with a few bales of Columbian contraband in the bed. I wouldn't
put it past them. And if that IS what happened, I doubt Dad
would've been too anxious for the cops to collect his boys. Or
his cargo.

Whatever the case, nobody ever found out. The next update
I got on THAT situation was the following Christmas. My Dad told
me that Beck had been busted in California for God-only-knew
what,
and had died in prison. The facts were sketchy, but I didn't
press details. Dad obviously considered it a case of "good
riddance" but didn't actually say the words, because he knew Beck
was a friend of mine.

Sal was MIA, and as far as I know, nobody ever heard from
him again. But without Beck to take care of him, it's doubtful
that he came to a good end.

So that leaves Jimmy. He finished college, got his degree,
and started working for a big company, designing various kinds of
equipment. I don't want to specify the company, or even the exact
type of equipment. Let's just say that you'd recognize the
company name if I mentioned it, and Jimmy is head of the
department that builds machines for making cold things hot and
hot things cold. If that's not good enough for you, too bad.

My Dad kept the scrapyard, continued going to auctions and
making a profit, all the way up until he retired last year. He
and Mom moved to Phoenix, where they're probably the only retired
couple who don't complain about the heat. They came up to visit a
few months ago, to see Lily and I and the kids, and while they
were here I took my Dad out one night to shoot some pool. I told
him the story of the Rocket Car, not knowing what his reaction
would be. I was more than a little pleased to see that he laughed
so hard that I thought I'd end up having to call the paramedics.
Seems that over the years he HAD heard various bullshit-artists
mention a car driven into a cliff, but nobody ever provided any
specifics, so he's always dismissed it as just another stupid
story. The one important thing he had to say on the subject did
NOT please me, not even a little. When I told him about how I
built the car, I mentioned that I didn't want to take one of the
parachutes from the shed, because I knew he'd find out one was
missing.

He said "You mean there were still some parachutes left in
that shed? Shit I'd thought I'd sold them all."

Son of a bitch.

Jimmy and I drifted apart while I was in the Navy, but we
got back in touch once I got my discharge and started college. I
know 26 is a pretty ripe old age to be a freshman, but I'd taken
a bunch of courses and equivalency tests during my hitch in the
Navy, so it only took two years to finish off my degree. One
thing about living on a ship, you have plenty of time to study.
I've stayed in touch with Jimmy over the years, he's met my
family and I've met his, but beyond the occasional phone call
and Christmas card, we haven't been very close. Part of it is
that we live pretty far apart, and part of it the pressures of
family, careers, etc. But Jimmy never forgot about the Rocket
Car, and over the years he's taken great joy in tweaking my balls
about it from time to time. Every now and then I'd
get something in the mail to remind me of the whole thing,
something Jimmy thought I'd think was funny. At first it was just
the odd newspaper clipping or magazine article, but once VCR's
became popular, he started sending videotapes. And even though
there was never a note or explanation with a tape he sent, I
always knew what to look for when I watched the movie. One
was "The Right Stuff", and I laughed out loud when scenes of
the rocket-sled tests came on the screen. Another was more
recent, a Charlie Sheen flick called "Terminal Velocity". I kept
my eyes peeled for whatever it was Jimmy wanted me to see, and
sure enough, there was a scene where Charlie and some blonde
bimbo escape from the bad guys in a homemade rocket sled.

I got a chuckle out of that one, too.

The one movie he sent that I DIDN'T find very amusing came
a few years ago, at a point where I hadn't heard anything from
Jimmy in a long time. A box came in the mail, and when I opened
it up, it was a videotape, just like the others. But instead of
being a stand-alone movie, this was the third part of a
three-movie series. And although I'd seen the first one a
couple of times (it was old enough to be shown on network TV by
then), I'd never seen the second part. So I had to rent Part II
at the video store down the street, which I watched with my
family one Friday night. The next day my wife took the kids to
visit her parents, and I stayed home and put Jimmy's movie in the
VCR. And I must admit, I DID enjoy it, but
the similarities between the movie and our little adventure in
1978 were too close for comfort at some points. The part at the
beginning of the movie, where Doc Brown and Marty McFly find the
DeLorean in the abandoned mine shaft was bad enough. But toward
the end, when mounted put railroad wheels on the time-machine and
push it down the tracks with the locomotive...

Like I said, too close for comfort. And I'm really glad I
watched that movie alone. I don't know what sort of expression
was on my face while I watched, but it must've been a scary one.
As a matter of fact, when the movie was over, I got up close to
the TV and read each and every name in the credits. I didn't
think I'd actually find a name I'd recognize, but we
never DID find out what happened to Sal after he was left on his
own in California.

I guess we never will. Not for sure, anyway.

Anyway, that's my story, take it or leave it. And even if
everyone who sees it thinks it's bullshit, I'm glad I told it. If
I never decided to sit down and tell it, my wife probably never
would've given me this nifty computer last Christmas. As a
result, I not only got to write most of it from the comfort of my
own bedroom, but I've also re-established contact with
Jimmy. E-mail is a terrific way to stay in touch with people, and
as soon as I told Jimmy I was going to write this whole thing
down, he started spouting out facts and details I'd long since
forgotten. That's one of the reasons this story is running so
long. So I suppose that if an apology has to be made, it should
be a JOINT apology from Jimmy as well as I.

One last thing before I call it quits:

When I originally ran this story up the flagpole for
Jimmy, he looked around on the Web for the "Darwin Awards" I'd
told him about, and was as shocked as I was at how far and wide
the Rocket Car story had spread. But he also seemed a little
miffed about the whole thing. He seemed to think that if anyone
deserved the Darwin Award, it was US.

It's tough to tell just how serious a person is when
you're carrying on a conversation via E-mail.

I pointed out that not only was the Darwin Award
completely intellectual in nature (I doubt like hell a
gold-plated trophy exists anywhere), but it was NOT the sort of
thing a person goes out of his way to win.

Jimmy thought differently.

Have you ever seen those silver Jesus-fish emblems that
Christians decorate their bumpers with? Well, not too long ago,
someone came up with a variation on the emblem, sort of a
counterpart to the Christian fish. It's the same outline of the
fish that the Christians use, but instead of saying "Jesus" (or
whatever) inside the body of the fish, it says "Darwin". And the
fish itself has little feet on the underside. The
message (for those academic enough to grasp it) is supposed to be
a rebuttal of sorts. Evolution over creation.

Very cerebral, eh?

Well, I've seen these things around from time to time,
both the Christian version and the Darwin version. And to be
honest, neither one made much of an impression. But this past
Easter, I got yet another package from Jimmy, the first one in a
long time. I thought it was another video, but when I opened it
up, I found it wasn't. Inside was a Hallmark card congratulating
me on a happy 20th anniversary. Along with the card was one of
the fish emblems, the "Darwin" version instead of the standard
Christian model. But not EXACTLY the Darwin version. Instead of
little feet at the bottom of the fish, this one had little
wheels. And there were curly lines coming from the rear of the
fish. Lines that looked like jet exhaust, coming from a tail that
looked surprisingly like a JATO exhaust nozzle.

Maybe Jimmy had a novelty store make it up, or maybe he
made it himself. Myself, I like to think the latter. But I ran
right out to my car (a boring old Toyota Camry,
gasoline-powered), wiped down the trunk lid, and stuck it on. And
even though nobody else knows what the hell it is, I get a
chuckle every time I look at it.

It ain't a gold statue, but it's good enough for me.

The Rocket Car Chapter 8

2007-04-16T19:05:00.000-06:00

COUNTING DOWN

If the track had been ready on Monday, I don't think I
could've convinced Beck to let the maiden voyage of the rocket
car wait until Jimmy came in on the weekend. He was far too
anxious to get moving on the whole thing. As a matter of fact,
the only way I was able to get him to wait as long as I did was
by agreeing to start getting things ready on Friday. After my
Dad and I went home from the yard on Friday, I returned to the
yard and found Sal and Beck waiting for me. We backed the flatbed
into the weedy field where the Rocket Car was docked, set up the
ramps, and hoisted the car onto the flatbed with the winch. I
drove the flatbed out to the abandoned mine and down the slope to
tracks, scared shitless that I'd get the truck stuck in the soft
sand. But I made it down the slope okay, and we lowered
the Rocket Car onto the tracks.

It looked perfectly at home sitting on the rails. Like
that's were it was meant to be all the time.

But we didn't have time to stand around admiring the way
the Rocket Car looked on the tracks. Even though we were a
hundred yards from a fairly secluded stretch of highway, the
sight of a five-ton flatbed, a four-wheel-drive pickup, and a
rocket powered `59 Chevy on railroad wheels would've
looked pretty peculiar to anyone coming down the road. So as soon
as the car was on the rails, I climbed into the Chevy's drivers'
seat and Beck pushed me down the tracks with the pickup's bumper
until the car was close to the mine entrance. Actually, it almost
went THROUGH the boarded- up hole in the mountain. I was sitting
sitting there enjoying the ride, halfway to the mine entrance,
when I suddenly realized that hitting the dump valve would stop
the car PERMANENTLY. Or at least until we went back to the
scrapyard and snagged the portable compressor to re-inflate the
shocks. About a quarter mile from the mine entrance I started
waving out the window and screaming for Beck to stop, and when he
finally hit the brakes, I must've been doing about forty or so.
By the time the car coasted to a stop, I was no more than fifty
feet from the entrance.

Close call.

We pulled the boards from the mine entrance again, and
Beck used the pickup to ease the Chevy into the mine. Very
slowly. Once it was all the way inside, he took me back to the
flatbed, and followed me back to the yard. I parked the flatbed
where it usually spent the night, we loaded the portable
compressor into the pickup, and returned to the mine.

Since we didn't have a tow chain, we had to muscle the car
far enough out of the mine for Beck to get the truck in front of
the Chevy and push it back down the tracks. When we got the car
about a mile from the entrance, we let the car coast to a stop,
Beck got out of the pickup, and Sal slipped into the driver's
seat. Beck jumped into the Rocket Car with a maniac grin on his
face, and Sal maneuvered the pickup behind the Chevy.
Beck gave us a jaunty thumbs-up, and Sal hit the gas. We picked
up speed until we were doing about fifty, and just before I was
about to scream at Sal to stop, he hit the brakes. We watched the
rocket car pull away at goodly clip.

And keep going.

And keep going.

And just as I was wondering if the brake system might have
malfunctioned, I saw the ass end of the Chevy pitch up slightly
as Beck hit the dump lever. Sal and I both let out the breath
we'd been holding, and drove down to where the car was stopped.
When we got there, the car was resting on the runners and Beck
was sitting on the hood. Less than twenty feet from the mine
entrance.

I'll say it again: Beck was a fucking maniac.

I thought he might make up an excuse for waiting so long
to stop, that the brakes didn't work or whatever, but he didn't
even bother. The runners had scraped the rust off ten feet of the
rails, and when I looked under the Rocket Car, water was still
squirting out of the hoses. When I asked what the fuck was wrong
with him, Beck said "Hey, I didn't feel like pushing this fucker
all the way to the garage, so I let it coast most of the way. You
have a problem with that?"

Actually, I didn't. The "garage" he was referring to was
actually the mine shaft, where we planned to stash the car until
the firing test the next day. Nobody wanted to go through the
bullshit of hauling the car back to the yard, so we decided to
simply push it into the mine, replace the boards, and leave it
there overnight. And after re-inflating the shocks from
the compressor in the pickup, that's exactly what we did. But
every time I looked at those two bright spots on the rails, less
than twenty feet from the boards covering that mine shaft, I
wondered if it would EVER be a good idea to let Beck drive the
thing while a rocket was pushing it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

LEFTOFF!

The first (and last) test run of the Rocket Car happened
on Holy Saturday, 1978. For the non-Christians in the house, Holy
Saturday is the day before Easter, a day the faithful are
supposed to spend preparing for the Easter feast and quietly
contemplating the Miracle of the Resurrection. My family has been
Catholic for about a thousand generations, so I suppose this put
me firmly among the ranks of "The Faithful". Which means the
Pope probably would've frowned on my spending the day before
Easter experimenting with illegal military ordnance and
trespassing on private property, but I'm also confident that
nothing in the Bible covers what we were doing that Saturday
morning, so I probably had some wiggle-room.

We assembled at the abandoned mine early in the morning,
just before dawn. The prefabricated story to my parents was that
Jimmy and I were driving up to.... a big city in the area (you'll
excuse me if I don't specify which one), and wanted to get an
early start. Jimmy was using the same excuse for anyone at
his house who was curious. Dad wasn't even going into the yard
on Holy Saturday, so I had the day to myself. I went to Jimmy's
house and found him waiting for me on the front porch, and we
left for the mine.

When we arrived, I was tremendously relieved to find that
Sal and Beck were already there, sitting on the hood of the
pickup, which was parked near the mine entrance. They even had
the boards pulled from the mine entrance and the car pushed out
into the open. My relief wasn't due to the fact that
they'd showed up (you couldn't have kept Beck away with a court
order) but because they were just sitting on the hood of the
pickup, patiently waiting for Jimmy and I to arrive. See, the
night before, we'd loaded two of the JATO's, the portable
compressor, and three five-gallon jerry cans of water into the
back of Beck's pickup, for convenience's sake. It was way
too much stuff to haul in my car, and we figured the gear would
be safe spending the night in Beck's truck, covered with a tarp.
What hadn't occurred to me until I got home was that Beck was in
possession of everything he needed to test the car HIMSELF, on
the sly. I even considered taking a ride past his house around
midnight to see if the truck was still there, when it occurred to
me that even though he DID have the ignition button on the
dashboard, he had no way to light the rocket. And I didn't think
he was stupid enough to set the car up and strap himself
in while Sal stuffed lit matches into the JATO, trying to get it
started.

Sal would've done it without hesitation. But not Beck.

I'd like to say that depriving Beck of the igniters was a
piece of intelligent foresight on my part, but it was really
exactly the opposite. I'd just forgotten them. We had to stop at
the scrapyard to get the igniters and a hundred-foot roll of
field-phone wire before we went to the mine.

Anyway, I left my car parked on the shoulder of the road,
and we walked down the slope to find that Beck and Sal were
aching to get the test under way. Beck shot a look at the
igniters in my hand as he was getting into the truck, but it was
still too dark out to read his expression. If I had to guess, I'd
say it was an irritated one. Beck started the truck and
drove around to the front of the Rocket Car, then left it in low
gear as he pushed it to the opposite end of the track, with the
rest of us riding on the tailgate. It wasn't until the car was
stopped at the end of the track that Jimmy looked the car over
and asked what turned out to be a VERY important question.

He said "So why is the car pointing THIS way?"

Sal and Beck and I stared at the car for a minute, and
although I can't speak for the other two, I was trying to come up
with something to say. To be honest, I'd never given it much
thought. I suppose that when the car was brought to my Dad's
scrapyard, it was hauled onto the flatbed rear-first, because the
front end was further from the path winding through the
yard. When we loaded the car to bring it to the mine, winching it
onto the flatbed rear-first was simply the easiest thing to do,
so that's what we did. And when we got to the tracks, I'd simply
driven the flatbed to the end opposite the mine shaft and parked
facing away from the entrance. It seemed like a good way to avoid
driving the flatbed over the tracks themselves, which might have
damaged them. So when we rolled the car down the planks and onto
the tracks, it ended up facing the mine entrance. Sure,
we could've set it on the tracks facing the opposite way, but...
nobody thought of it. Actually, nobody even thought to THINK
about it. The whole process seemed simple and straightforward,
even the part where we pushed the Chevy into the mine entrance
and boarded it up. I mean, you DRIVE a car into a garage, you
don't BACK it in, right?

So the three of us gave Jimmy a shrug, and I asked him
what difference it made. He walked around the car looking
thoughtful, and after awhile said "None. This is good" But later
on I figured out what he'd been thinking about. If something went
wrong with car (specifically the brakes), which way would we want
it to be pointing? If the brakes failed while it was heading
AWAY from the mine, the car would eventually run onto the
wide-gauge rails at the end of OUR track. And with the flatbed
back in the yard, it wasn't likely we'd be able to get the car
off the tracks if it got stuck there. But with the car pointed
TOWARD the mine, a brake failure would mean the car simply flew
into an abandoned silver mine. We could declare the experiment a
failure, nail the boards back up, and call it a day. Of course
the equation looked a lot different with a passenger on board,
but that's why we were doing a test run first.

Ah yes, the test run.

Once Jimmy was through looking the car over, I broke the
news to Beck that the first run would be unmanned. He didn't like
the sound of that a BIT, even after I explained to him that it
was in his best interest. Personally, I wouldn't have gone near
the thing unless we'd had at LEAST one trial, but Beck's mind
didn't work that way. He wanted to ride in the car on the first
run, and it took awhile to convince him that it simply
wasn't going to happen. But after a little arguing he
grudgingly accepted our logic. We took one of the JATOS out of
it's crate and loaded into the pipe at the rear of the car, then
I had Sal drive me down the tracks toward the mine. When the
odometer had ticked off exactly a mile, I made him stop while I
got out and pounded an eight-inch spike into one of
the wooden ties. The lumber was still solid enough to hold the
spike well, which was nice to see, since I had no alternative
plan to activate the brakes. We drove back to the Rocket Car and
found that Jimmy and Beck had already shoved one of my igniters
into the JATO nozzle, attached the leads to the roll of
field-phone cable with wirenuts, and were unrolling the cable
away from the tracks. I told Sal to park about fifty feet away
from the Chevy, with the broad side of the truck facing the
tracks. Jimmy had mentioned the chance of the JATO exploding like
a bomb when it was ignited, and I wanted to have the pickup truck
between me and the JATO when it was lit.

I filled the can under the Chevy's hood with water from
one of the jerry cans, closed the hood and rigged the automatic
brake. The wire stretched between the runners was only five or
six inches above the railroad ties, and it looked low enough to
catch on the spike with no problem. Beck came over to watch the
whole procedure, a little miffed that the unmanned test
had obviously been planned out well in advance. But by then it
was too late for him to raise any serious objections. If the car
ran okay, he'd get his ride. If not, he'd be grateful we made the
test.

Once the brakes were rigged and the water can filled,
there was only one thing left to do: Light the mother and see
what happened.

We all gathered around the truck, Beck popped the hood,
and I cut the field phone wire from the roll and stripped the
ends. By then the sun had climbed over the top of the mountains,
and we had a clear view of the entire track. I wrapped one of the
field phone wires around the corroded negative post of the
truck's battery, and just as I was about to touch the other
wire to the positive, Sal yelled "Wait!"

He scared the shit out of me.

I said "What? What? What's the problem?"

Sal looked slightly embarrassed, and said "Shouldn't we
have a countdown?"

Jesus Christ.

Beck gave him a smack in the back of the head, but I told
him sure, if he wanted a countdown, we'd have a countdown. So Sal
counted down from ten, and when he reached zero, I touched the
wire to the lead of the battery.

Liftoff.

The sequence of events that followed happened so damned
fast that I'm surprised my mind was able to record everything
that occurred. But even though parts of this story have grown
foggy over the years, the memory of the actual Flight of the
Rocket Car remains crystal-clear.

When I touched the wire to battery post, we heard a little
fizz from the JATO. I knew what it was, since I'd heard it
before. The igniter going off. I didn't expect to hear it, since
I figured the rocket would light instantly. Instead, it hissed
for a second, then stopped. But before I could start to worry if
the rocket was a dud, there was a massive eruption
of orange flame from the ass of the Chevy, as if it had just laid
the worst fart in history. Along with the flame was a huge,
howling roar, something nobody had counted on. We'd all seen the
Apollo launches on TV, and we KNEW that rockets were noisy, but
nothing had prepared us for this. It sounded like.... I don't
know what. Like a solid-fuel rocket igniting, I suppose. And the
noise and smoke continued for what seemed like a long time
before the Rocket Car took off.

No, scratch that. It didn't take off, it JUMPED.

I've been trying to figure out a way to put it into words,
but the sight is almost impossible to describe. Think of this:
You know what it looks like when you shoot a paper clip with a
rubber band? One second the clip is between your fingers, and the
next it's just... gone. You can't track it with your eyes,
because it moves too fast. All you can do is hope to shift your
eyes to where it was going, so you can see where it hits.

Think of the same thing happening with a 1500-pound car.

And I remember thinking later that there was no way in
HELL I was EVER going to ride in the thing. I could only imagine
what would've happened to Beck if we'd let him ride in it. I'm
sure the seat would've been torn from it's mounts, and Beck
probably would've made a hasty exit through the back
windshield. I don't know much about G-forces or rocket
construction, but I can't think of any way a regular car seat
could've stood up to that kind of acceleration.

In the space of a second, the car jumped down the track,
heading away from us, and we were enveloped in thick,
chemical-smelling smoke. Another bit of poor planning. We all ran
up the slope to get out of the artificial fogbank, but the
roar from the rocket stopped as quickly as it started. Jimmy says
the burn time on our JATO was 2.2 seconds, but at the time it
seemed a LOT longer than that. I staggered up the slope and
looked down the tracks, to see that the Rocket Car was moving
along at a rapid pace, toward the spike I'd driven in the
railroad tie. And although it was moving damned fast, it was far
enough away so that I can't even take a guess as to how fast it
was going. My eyes were still burning from the rocket smoke, but
I did see it pass the point where I'd planted the spike, and
then...

Something happened.

Intellectually, I know exactly what happened. The spike
caught the piano wire, pulled the stick out from under the
dump-valve lever, and the air shocks lowered the car to the
rails. I didn't actually see the car drop, but it
must have happened. Because a second later, more smoke started
pouring out of the car. Only this time it was coming from UNDER
the car, and it was steam, not smoke. The runners had heated up,
and the water shooting onto the hot brakes was turning into
steam.

But it kept going.

And going.

It didn't seem to be slowing down very much, either. It
MUST have been, since the runners were obviously pushing against
the rails hard enough to create a lot of heat. But I guess it
wasn't enough. The car kept moving, closer and closer to the
mine. The last coherent thought I had was that it had been a VERY
good move to point the car toward the mine. It was still moving
at a good clip, highway-speed at least, when it was fifty yards
from the entrance. It obviously wasn't going to stop in time,
and I remember wondering just how far into the mine it would
go before stopping.

But it never made to the entrance.

Later on, Jimmy and I had a long discussion about what
happened next, but we were too far away for anyone to have a
clear view. Maybe one of the runners burned away and got caught
in the ground. Or on the tracks. Maybe one of the old axles
finally reached it's breaking point. Or one of my welds
couldn't take the strain. Whatever it was, the Rocket Car
derailed about twenty yards from the mine entrance. It still had
plenty of inertia, and continued moving toward the mine, but the
wheels were no longer on the tracks. Actually it was straddling
one of the rails, screeching and screaming and kicking up a cloud
of sparks from the point where the frame slid along the rail.

And it was no longer aligned with the mine entrance,
either.

Things were still moving too fast for my brain to process
the information, but when I saw the car skidding toward the mine
entrance at sixty or seventy miles an hour, and NOT firmly on the
rails, I knew that Something Bad Was About To Happen. Exactly
WHAT was still a mystery at that point, but a second later I
found out. The Chevy slid down the tracks, but instead of driving
through the mine entrance, it went in at an angle with the ass
end canted toward the road. The front end smashed into one of the
huge timbers that outlined the mine entrance, cracking it in
half. After a very short pause, the timber collapsed,
immediately followed by the overhead timber it supported. Those
timbers must have been under considerable stress, because a
second later the entire entrance to the mine collapsed on top of
the Rocket Car with a huge grinding rumble and a cloud of dust.

I just gawked.

I remember that part clearly, standing there looking at
the car in the distance, just before dust obscured the picture.
My Rocket Car was sitting there like a busted Tonka truck while a
mountain fell on it.

I almost cried.

A second later I became aware of voices shouting behind
me. I turned around and saw Jimmy and Sal in the bed of the
pickup, and Beck behind the wheel. They'd obviously had the sense
to get into the truck and chase down the rocket car, while I
stood there with my mouth hanging open. I jumped into the bed,
and Beck floored it toward the mine entrance. Toward
the FORMER mine entrance. During the short ride I was wondering
how we were going to haul the car out of the pile of rubble and
get it out of there, but when we got closer I saw that it was a
foolish idea. The front half of the car was crushed like a beer
can, under boulders ranging from the size of a watermelon to the
size of the car itself. Smaller pieces were still coming down
when we got there. The only way that car was ever coming out was
if someone torched off the back end and hauled it out with
a winch.

The front end was never going to see the light of day
again.

Beck stopped the truck a safe distance from the wreckage,
and we all got out to look. But there wasn't much to look at. The
only thing NOT buried by the cave-in was the last four feet of
the car, and that was about it. The trunk lid and rear bumper
were visible, but the rest of the car was buried under boulders
and rubble. It was obvious that the car would have to stay were
it was, but after we gaped at it awhile, I decided that there WAS
one part of the Rocket Car that absolutely couldn't stay where it
was.

The rocket itself.

Up to that point we were guilty of little more than
trespassing. Sure we'd caused a mine to cave in, but the mine had
been closed for decades, and it wasn't likely anyone would be too
upset about it. But that fucking JATO bottle was sticking out of
the wreckage in a VERY obvious way, and had to go. So I
cautiously made my way over to the remains of the Chevy,
hoping an expended JATO would be a lot lighter than the full one.

I gave it a tug, but it wouldn't budge.

Beck came over and gave me a hand, but we still couldn't
make it move. It wouldn't even wiggle. All we could figure was
that the pipe must have been twisted or squashed further in,
where we couldn't see it. After a little more grunting and
pushing, Beck went back to the pickup for his jack. We figured
that if we took some of the weight off the pipe, we might be able
to budge the rocket. But before he could get back, the pile of
rubble shifted, sending a good-sized boulder careening past me.

Suddenly jacking the car up seemed like a very poor idea.

And shortly after that, even staying in the area didn't
seem very smart. Jimmy quickly summed the situation up for us. At
that particular moment, there wasn't much we could do in the way
of damage control. The car was stuck, and there was nothing we
could do about it. The JATO was wedged in too tightly to remove
too. And if WE couldn't move it, then it was unlikely anyone else
could. Not without a major effort. Fortunately, the only thing to
show that we'd even BEEN there was the piece of field-phone
wire at the other end of the tracks, and the remains of the
Rocket Car itself. Which meant that it was an excellent time to
get the hell out of there, before someone came down the road and
wondered what was going on.

We needed no more encouragement. Beck and Sal ran for the
cab of the pickup, Jimmy and I piled into the bed, Beck pointed
the truck toward the road, and stomped the gas. I guess he didn't
have the four-wheel drive engaged, because the back wheels of the
truck threw up rooster-tails of sand as we took off up the slope,
but not the front wheels. But we didn't get stuck, which was the
one thing I was afraid of. We shot up the slope, bounced onto the
asphalt, and as soon as the rear wheels hit the asphalt they
started burning rubber. Beck steered back toward town, only
stopping long enough for Jimmy and I to bail out and run to my
car. I jumped in and started, it, but Jimmy ran back down the
slope, toward the end of the railroad track. I yelled after him,
but instead of yelling back, he stooped and grabbed something
from the ground.

The field-phone wire.

He was reeling it up in his hands as he ran back up the
slope, and when he reached the car he tossed the wad of wire in
the back seat and jumped in.

I punched the gas, spun the car around, and headed back
toward town. And that was the last I ever saw of the Rocket Car.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

The Rocket Car Chapter 7

2007-04-16T19:04:00.000-06:00

SAFETY FIRST (OR SECOND)

Why none of us thought to take a look at the tracks coming
out of that abandoned silver mine before this is anyone's guess.
Beck and Sal and I had stood right on top of them when we got the
bucket cars, but none of us considered the possibility that a
long section of the track might still be there, only underground.
As a matter of fact "underground" is a pretty drastic term for
what we found. The tracks were actually covered by a fairly thin
layer of drifted sand and dust. The outcrop around the
mine shaft broke the wind enough to keep the tracks clear near
the entrance, but beyond that, the rails must have been a good
place for drifting sand to pile up, and eventually cover the
rails. But Jimmy's tire iron sank no more than an inch or two
before striking metal, and we didn't so much have to DIG for the
rails as brush the sand off them. We ended up walking more than a
half mile from the mine entrance, Jimmy stopping occasionally to
stick the tire iron into the sand, and striking metal every
time. Eventually it started getting too dark to see where we were
going, so we made our way back up the slope to where the cars
were parked. I told Jimmy I'd be back bright and early the next
day to find out exactly how far the tracks ran, but Jimmy seemed
confident we'd have more than enough.

He didn't seem too confident of the Rocket Car, though.

When we got back to the cars, I found that Jimmy had me
follow him in my own car because he was going back to school
directly from the mine entrance. But there was still a matter he
wanted to discuss, that matter being the first run of the Rocket
Car. Without a good launch site the matter could wait, but since
it seemed as if we'd found one, Jimmy figured we'd better discuss
the whole thing immediately. It turned out that he was VERY
worried about the first run of the car, particularly the idea of
having a person inside when we fired it. Of course I already knew
there were plenty of things that could go wrong, since I'd built
the thing in a junkyard. But when Jimmy started to lay out the
possible ways a person inside the car could get hurt or killed,
he made it sound a little less safe than going over Niagara Falls
in a barrel. First, we were dealing with a highly volatile
chemical propellant we knew nothing about. We didn't know how old
it was, where it came from, or how it was supposed to
behave. There was actually a very real possibility that the JATO
could explode like a bomb, reducing the car to flame and shrapnel
in a split-second. But even if it DID work as expected, the
rocket was held in place by a length of water pipe welded to the
bottom half of a train car that was God only knew how old. If any
of the welds didn't hold, there was no telling what the outcome
would be. Then there was the matter of the brakes. All we had was
a setup that looked good and sounded like it might work. But if
someone inside the car found themselves going 100+ miles per and
the brakes DIDN'T work...

The way he described the whole thing made it sound like
suicidal insanity, and I started to get a little pissed off at
him. If he'd been thinking about all this shit the whole time,
why hadn't he SAID anything?

As it turned out, he wasn't suggesting that we scrap the
project outright, just that we perform a "test run" before trying
it for real. An UNMANNED test run. Rig a system to activate the
brakes at some point after the JATO had burned out, point the
Rocket Car down the tracks, and let it run pilotless the first
time. After all, it wasn't as if we needed a man at
the tiller while the car was moving. The person we'd been
referring to as the "pilot" would actually be the "passenger",
his sole duty being to hit the dump valve before the car ran out
of track. And since we had four JATOS, wasting one for the sake
of safety seemed like a prudent move.

I had to admit, he made a LOT of sense.

I pointed out that Beck would probably have a bird when he
found out we weren't going to let him drive the car on it's
maiden voyage, but we both agreed that it wouldn't be a major
problem as long as Beck got to drive it on the first MANNED run.
We'd just take a second JATO along, and if the car ran
successfully the first time, Beck could take it out the
second time. If the car ended up a twisted lump of smoking metal,
Beck would be happy we decided to take the precaution.

With these details settled, I said goodbye to Jimmy and
headed home. On the way I was thinking about how to kick in the
braking system with nobody inside the car, but since we'd only
need it for the trial run, it didn't have to be anything fancy.
The next day I was busy at the yard sorting through the latest
load of junk my Dad had bought at an auction over the weekend,
but I DID find time to rig the brakes for our test run. All I did
was twist a screw-eye into each brake runner, then run a length
of piano wire through the openings in each eye and up through a
hole in the Chevy's floor. I tied the ends of the wire to a short
stick, and used it to prop the brake's dump valve in the "up"
position. Then I looped a piece of rubber from a bicycle inner
tube over the lever, and tied it under the valve box. The bike
tube pulled the lever toward the "dump" position, but the lever
couldn't move due to the stick propping it up. I figured that
once we found a good section of track, all we'd have to do was
drive a spike into one of the rail-ties at the point where we
wanted the brakes to kick in. When the car passed over the spike,
the spike would snag the wire, pull out the stick, and the dump
valve would snap down, activating the brakes.

Now, if you're getting tired of hearing about all the Rube
Goldberg bullshit I was adding to this machine, take a minute to
think about how I felt while I was doing the work. By the time
Jimmy suggested that "we" rig "some sort of automatic brake
system", I was getting mighty sick of rigging and drilling and
bolting and cutting. Let's face it, despite the fact that we came
up with a few clever ways to solve pretty tough problems, the
Rocket Car was STILL just a pile of shit that I knocked
together in a junkyard. And I was tired of trying to figure out
ways to make important things happen by using other people's
garbage. I made up my mind that the auto-brake was the last piece
of work I was going to do on the car. If what I'd built at that
point wasn't good enough, I'd simply turn the whole mess over to
Beck and let him drive the fucking thing into the Mystery Mine,
or past the police station, or whatever he wanted to do.

However, there was still the matter of the launch site
preparation to take car of, so on Tuesday I called Beck and told
him to swing by the yard in his Dad's pickup and get me after
work. He and Sal both showed up, and when I took them to the
abandon mine and showed them how far from the entrance the tracks
extended, they were ecstatic. I didn't bother to explain that
Jimmy had come up with the idea two days earlier, since they'd
probably spent Monday and Tuesday driving around in the desert
looking for a decent set of tracks themselves. I brought a tire
iron along, and sat on the tailgate of the pickup while Beck
drove away from the mine entrance. Every now and then he stopped
the truck, and I plunged the tire iron into the sand where the
tracks should be. And I kept striking metal over and
over. Finally the truck stopped and stayed stopped, and when I
looked over my shoulder, I saw that we'd come to the end of the
line. Or at least the end of the usable line. Exactly 1.9 miles
from the mine entrance, the narrow-gauge tracks intersected a set
of modern, standard-gauge tracks leading into town. Which made
sense, after I'd thought about it awhile. The newer tracks were
probably laid on the bed of some old narrow-gauge tracks, and
the rails leading toward the abandoned mine were probably a
spur coming off the main tracks.

But who cared? We had two miles of narrow gauge track,
more than enough to run the Rocket Car on.

I hoped.

Beck was thrilled over the discovery, until I explained
that the buried rails would have to be cleared before we could
take the car out for a test run. He enthusiastically assured me
that he and Sal would have the tracks cleared the next day, but I
had my doubts. And my doubts turned out to be well-grounded. I
didn't hear anything from Beck and Sal the next day, or the
day after that. I assumed they were in the process of clearing
the tracks, and it turned out they were. And the process turned
out to be a lot harder than either of them imagined. They started
out with Beck driving the truck while Sal sat on the tailgate,
dragging a street-sweepers broom along the rails. It worked, but
not as well as they expected. After driving that two-mile stretch
of track twice, Beck came up with a much better idea. They
simply broke back into the abandoned mine, grabbed the last
bucket-car we'd found near the entrance, and pushed it down the
length of the tracks with the bumper of the pickup. Once the
wheels loosened up, the bucket car worked like a snowplow and
cleared the tracks with a single pass. I had my doubts that this
method worked as well as they claimed, but when I drove out
to the abandoned mine after work on Thursday, I saw that it had.
Two rusty metal rails poked out of the hardpan, starting at the
mine entrance and extending out into the distance. When I took a
closer look at the rails, I saw that they were indeed rusty as
hell, but still solid. When I banged one with a rock, I saw
plenty of good steel under the rust.

Best of all, they were straight as an arrow.

For me, this was the point where the whole project made
the transition from theory to reality. I squatted next to those
tracks and realized that the last obstacle had suddenly been
removed, that we really were going to run the car. And to my
surprise, it didn't feel good at all. Suddenly the whole thing
seemed stupid and insane and dangerous and illegal as hell. But
by then it was way too late to stop.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

The Rocket Car Chapter 6

2007-04-14T09:38:00.000-06:00

AFFATUS INTERRRUPTUS

Before I go on, I think I should take a minute to explain
why this whole story is getting so lengthy. Actually, my wife
says I should issue a formal apology for inflicting such a
long-winded pile of shit on anyone who reads this. And I halfway
agree with her. But I want to make you aware of one thing: I did
NOT plan it this way. When I decided to write down the story of
the Rocket Car, I figured it would take all of two pages, maybe
three. Four at the outside. That's because I was working from a
set of 20-year-old recollections, and a lot of the details were
missing. I didn't realize that once I started dredging up these
old memories, all SORTS of bits and pieces would start to fill
themselves in, whether I wanted them to or not. Four pages became
five, then six, etc. etc. I originally planned to have the whole
thing done by the beginning of April, so that it would be ready
to go on the 20th anniversary of the first (and last) run of
our Rocket Car, but April came and went, and I was still hunting
and pecking. So did May, then June.

Nothing I can do about it now.

Besides the miscellaneous details that came flooding back
when I started to write this story down, the technical details of
the whole project turned out to be more involved than I
remembered when I started writing. When I began, I remembered a
simple 1-2-3 process that took place over the course of a few
weeks, and seemed fairly simple. But as the story progressed, I
realized I had to supply a LOT more detail than I
originally intended, just to keep it from sounding completely
stupid. And I'm still not sure I've accomplished the
not-sounding-stupid part. Even though the project was executed
one step at a time, it had a goofy, ill-planned,
Li'l Rascals feel to it, and no amount of explaining is going to
change that. Because basically it WAS a Li'l Rascals undertaking.
The only thing missing was a sign saying "He-Man Rocket Kar Klub"
over a treehouse door. But I'm not going to lie about the facts
or try to make the whole thing sound less silly than it actually
was. If someone had been hurt or killed, or even we'd been caught
trying to run a homemade rocket car through the desert, I'm sure
we'd all have ended up in the pokey. Even if a judge were willing
to overlook the instances of theft and trespassing
and illegal possession of military fireworks, we'd have probably
been charged with SOMETHING, just on general principal.
Conspiracy To Commit Flagrant Stupidity, maybe. If Beck had
gotten his way, a charge of attempted suicide would've been a
sure thing.

But nothing like this ever happened.

Having said that, I'd now like to issue a formal apology
for inflicting such a long-winded pile of shit on you.

Sorry about that. It won't happen again.

There you go, Lily. I did it. Happy?
-----------------------------------------------------------------

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

The idea of the Rocket Car sitting on cinderblocks in the
scrapyard, just waiting for a place to run it, was driving Beck
crazy. I have to admit, I was getting anxious to take it for a
test run myself, but Beck was really going nuts. I didn't hear
anything from him for the rest of the week, and I assumed it was
because he hadn't found a suitable launch site. It
was actually because his Dad had taken the four-wheel drive out
for one of his mysterious desert jaunts, and was gone for the
rest of the week. That left Beck and Sal with only one option,
driving Sal's beat-to-shit Ford Falcon, a car that barely held
it's own on pavement, never mind in the desert.

Meanwhile, the Rocket Car waited in the field.

I tried to think about it as little as possible, since I
didn't want to end up afflicted with the mania had gotten hold of
Beck. I worked at the scrapyard, just as I always had, trying to
avoid the far corner of the lot where the Rocket Car was. More
than once I thought about what I'd do if my Dad suddenly got a
buyer for that 1959 Chevy Impala, but there was really no point
worrying about such things. If it happened, I was simply screwed.
No way to explain my way out of a situation like THAT.

So I simply waited.

Actually, I did get ONE minor detail taken care of during
the delay, building igniters for the JATOs. I removed all the
taillights and turn-signal lights from the Impala (no matter what
became of the Rocket Car, signaling for a turn wouldn't be an
issue) and soldered two wires to each bulb. Next I carefully
cracked the glass on each bulb, leaving the filaments intact. The
bare filaments would heat to white-hot when connected to
car battery, but simply laying a hot filament inside the JATO
nozzle didn't seem like it would do the trick. Maybe it would
have, but since Beck and Sal still hadn't found a place to use
for a launch site, I had time to come up with something better.
So I pulled a dozen of the blank M-60 rounds from the ammo belt
my father kept in his office as a decoration, tore off the
skinny end of each shell, and dumped out the powder inside. I
poured a little of the powder into each of seven squares of
newspaper, folded the newspaper squares into packets around the
filaments of the light bulbs, and trussed each one up with
masking tape. When I connected one of them to a battery to test
the idea, it made an impressive little flare.

Surely enough to light the JATO. I hoped.

When Sal and Beck STILL hadn't reported finding a launch
site by Friday morning, I even went through the trouble of
putting an old car battery on the charger at the shop, installing
it in the Rocket Car, and wiring it to a switch on the dashboard.
I considered painting the switch bright red, with the word
IGNITION! underneath, just because I had the time. In retrospect
I'm glad I didn't go through the trouble, since we never used the
switch anyway. But at that point I realized that if Beck and Sal
didn't find a good spot soon, I might end up hauling the car out
to the nearest set of tracks and trying it out myself.

Jimmy came back from college again that weekend, just
about the same time Beck's father came back from who-knows-where
with the four-wheel-drive. During the week I had high hopes that
we'd be able to launch over the weekend, but when everyone
gathered at the scrapyard on Saturday afternoon, I knew it wasn't
going to happen. Jimmy took a look at the sprinkler system
and pronounced it workable, although I could tell he still had
some grave misgivings about how well a couple of pissing garden
hoses would cool down the brake runners. I had the same
misgivings myself, but the amount of heat generated would depend
on so many unknown factors that is wasn't something we
could really plan for. We didn't have any idea how fast the car
would actually go, what shape the tracks would be in, or even how
much the car weighed. From my point of view, the sprinklers were
there for only one reason: To keep the runners from burning up
like matchsticks when they hit the rails. After all, they WERE
made from wood. If the sprinklers could keep the runners from
turning into torches, they'd fulfill my expectations.

While Jimmy was inspecting the rocket car and telling us
what he'd found out about my JATO bottles (which turned out to be
very little), Sal and Beck told us about the launch locations
they'd scouted out over the week. And the news they had was grim
indeed. Within ten miles of town there were a total of three
sections of track long enough to run the rocket car on, and in my
opinion they were all dead losers. Beck and Sal knew the
area well enough to realize that most of the modern wide-gauge
tracks had been laid either directly on top of, or very close to,
the places where narrow-gauge tracks had once existed. So
naturally they started their search at the switching yard near
the city limits. There they found an excellent set of
narrow-gauge tracks roughly paralleling a shiny set of wide-gauge
rails that were probably used every day. But despite the fact
that the old-style tracks stretched for miles, they ran right
through a busy switching yard. Not a good place to test a
jet-propelled boxcar.

Another possibility was a set of rails that started in the
desert, continued for five miles or more, and ended in a soft
dirt field that would have been ideal for cushioning any crash
that might happen. Unfortunately, this set ran directly through
the middle of town, and the field at the end was the Jaycees
Softball Field, right across the street from the
police station. Even though Beck must've realized we'd never go
for THAT idea, it was obvious that he liked it. I imagine he
wanted to set the Rocket Car on the tracks across from the police
station in the dead of night, then blow the horn and scream until
a dozen cops came running out of the station to see what the
ruckus was. At that point he'd hang a moon out the window, then
light off the JATO and blaze out of town.

Or maybe this wasn't what he had in mind. But if you knew
Beck, you'd probably agree with me.

The last location Sal and Beck found was even worse than
the tracks that ran past the police station. The Mystery Mine was
a bargain-basement tourist attraction a few miles from town that
promised to show visitors the INNER WORKINGS OF AN AUTHENTIC
SILVER MINE. People who paid the $2.50 admission were loaded
aboard an ancient, rattling, mine-car and hauled through a few
hundred feet of cavern, while a tour guide in a hardhat
and goggles pointed at rusted pieces of machinery and chunks of
rock, explaining what they were. We'd all been on the Mystery
Mine tour at one time or another, and everyone agreed that the
only thing even VAGUELY interesting about it was wondering if a
cave-in would trap you in the bowels of the mine. Possibly
forcing you to eat the other tourists to survive. There was an
old song that used to play on the radio that described this
scenario, and there was a popular joke around town about being
trapped in the Mystery Mine and having to eat your way out. A
discreet sign near the mine's entrance proclaimed that it was
inspected for safety by the U.S. Bureau of Mines on a yearly
basis, but everyone knew that ancient mines tended to cave in
weather the U.S. Bureau of Mines said it was okay to or
not. Therefore, new folks in town were always advised not to take
the Mystery Mine tour without packing a sharp knife and a salt
shaker.

Cannibalism and the U.S. Bureau of Mines really weren't
our problem. But the fact that the Mystery Mine was a tourist
attraction presented all SORTS of difficulties. The land around
the Mystery Mine DID have plenty of narrow-gauge track, that much
was true. More than enough to suit our needs. But it also had
lots of fences, lots of lights, a couple of security guards, and
a handful of vicious Dobermans that patrolled the grounds at
night. We all knew it, too. I think Beck and Sal really just went
out to the Mystery Mine to take the tour and kill an afternoon.
Jimmy and I wouldn't have even wasted time with the trip.

The end result was that the Rocket Car was ready to roll,
but we had no place to roll it. Beck and Sal were confident that
they'd be able to find a good spot the following week (since they
were once again desert-capable) but Jimmy and I had serious
doubts. We knew the area around town as well as anyone, and the
chances of finding a good place to run the car were starting
to look grim.

When Jimmy spent the weekend in town, he usually headed
back to the college on Sunday evening, right after dinner. So it
surprised me when I got a call from him at 6:00 Sunday evening,
asking me if I wanted to take a ride with him to "discuss a few
things". I said sure, no trouble. He told me to drive over to his
house, and when I got there, he was already in his car. He
signaled for me to follow him, and I did. I had no idea where
we were going, but I followed anyway. After a few minutes I saw
that we were heading out of town, and I wondered what he was up
to. But I stopped wondering a little while later, when he pulled
to the side of the road near the abandoned mine shaft where we'd
liberated the two ancient bucket cars. He got out of his car,
opened the trunk and took out a tire iron, then headed toward the
mine entrance without a word. When I asked what we were doing, he
held up one finger in a wait-a-minute gesture.

I shut up.

Jimmy walked down the slope and stopped in front of the
boards we'd re-nailed over the entrance. Even though the sun was
almost down, there was still plenty of light to see by. I thought
he'd brought the tire iron to pry off the boards near the
entrance, but when I reached the place he was standing, he
started walking down the tracks, away from the entrance.
Ten paces later he'd reached the point where the tracks ended,
buried in sand. He took a few more paces, then bent over and
jabbed the pointy end of the tire iron into the sand.

To my surprise, it clanked.

Jimmy looked at me with a goofy little smile on his face,
and when I realized what he was doing, I smiled myself. Probably
just as goofily. He pulled the tire iron out of the sand, walked
a few more paces, then stuck it into the ground again. No clank
this time. But when he stuck it in again, a few inches to the
left, he got the same metallic clank. He was now standing a good
fifty feet from the mine entrance, and at least twenty feet
from the spot where we all assumed the tracks terminated. He
looked up at me, with that dumb smirk still plastered across his
face, and said "So, how far out do you think these tracks
actually go?"
----------------------------------------------------------------

The Rocket Car Chapter 5

2007-04-14T09:37:00.000-06:00

HEAT OF THE MOMENTUM

I stared at the note for quite awhile, trying to figure
out what it meant. At first I figured Jimmy must have left the
bundle of shocks, since his father stocked such things at his
body shop. But there was no way a college student like Jimmy
would misspell a common word like "problem", drunk or sober. And
the fact that most of the words were spelled CORRECTLY pretty
much eliminated Sal. Which meant that the shock-absorber care
package must have been Beck's doing, and as soon as I realized
this, I hustled the bundle into the house and stashed it in my
room. Obviously Beck's creative juices hadn't REALLY started
flowing until Jimmy and I left the previous night, and he'd
eventually come up with some sort of solution to the braking
problem. It also seemed that he had enough confidence in his idea
to act on it. At the time I had no idea what sort
of solution Beck could've come up with for our "problum", I just
hoped it turned out to be as sensible in the light of day as it
seemed when Beck came up with it the night before. The bundle of
shocks I stuck under my bed were relatively new, but covered with
dust and road-grime. They obviously hadn't come from an all-night
auto parts store. I guessed that Beck had been struck with a
burst of twisted inspiration after Jimmy and I left, then spent
the rest of the night staggering around town with his brother, a
bumper jack, and a crescent wrench. Looking for donor
to contribute some hardware to our cause. It seemed as if they'd
found one, too. And if someone was going to wake up that morning
to a car that was mysteriously missing all four shock absorbers,
I hoped like hell Beck's plan was worth it.

But I never actually ASKED Beck where the shocks came
from, and he never volunteered the information. I didn't consider
it critical to the mission.

I did, however, call him later in the day to ask what I
was supposed to DO with the shocks. His first suggestion was that
I stick them up my ass. I assumed that he was just in a bad mood
from a hangover, since there was no way an assfull of shock
absorbers would help to slow a fast-moving Rocket Car. So I kept
interrogating him until he finally remembered the details of his
Grand Plan, and agreed to meet me at the scrapyard later on. When
he finally showed up at the gates to the yard he looked
like hammered shit, but I expected as much. Go spend a night
getting drunk and stealing auto parts and see how YOU feel the
next day. But he was also reasonably coherent, and described his
idea while we walked out to the weedy corner of the field where
the Rocket Car was still perched on cinderblocks.

And I have to admit, it was good. Real good. Better than
anything we'd figured out up to that point, anyway. But the best
part (to me, anyway) was that it didn't involve me stealing
anything else that my father might notice.

Beck's idea was simple, elegant, and easy to put into
practice. I'd install the air shocks on the Rocket Car normally,
just as if the car would be riding on pavement instead of rails.
But I'd also bolt a pair of wooden beams onto the belly of the
car, runners that were placed exactly between the front
and rear train wheels. Each runner would be thick enough to reach
almost all the way down to the tracks, and the bottom would be
covered with rubber cut from old tires. The effect would be that
the car would roll freely while the air shocks were inflated,
with the twin runners suspended inches above the steel tracks.
When it was time to stop the car, the pilot would activate a
release valve which would dump the air from all four
shock absorbers simultaneously. The car would drop until it's
entire weight was resting on the runners, which would be pressing
into the railroad tracks. This would provide two brake shoes
three feet long, pushed against the track under the weight of the
car's body, providing a HUGE amount of stopping-power. And since
the wheel flanges would also still be firmly on the tracks,
the car would remain traveling in a straight line.

When Beck finished explaining his idea, I stood there with
my mouth hanging open. Actually we BOTH stood there with our
mouths open, but while my jaw was flopping due to surprise,
Beck's was caused by a powerful hangover that was still affecting
his motor control. I must admit, though, I was pretty impressed
with his thinking. We'd talked about dozens of ways to stop the
rocket car the previous evening, but nothing that even came
CLOSE to Beck's plan. It was simple to build, easy to install,
and stood a fair chance of working. I knew that sooner or later
I'd have to talk to Jimmy about the whole thing, but that didn't
stop me from getting to work installing the air shocks on the
Chevy as soon as Beck slouched out of the scrapyard and went
home.

I worked on the car for the rest of the afternoon, wanting
to get as much done as I could on a Sunday, while the yard was
closed. By the end of the day, I had the shocks installed on the
car and a pair of three-foot-long runners made from sections of 2
x 4 bolted together to make them thick enough to reach the rails.
All that was left to do was bolt the runners to the car frame and
arrange the air hoses for the shock absorbers, and the car would
be ready to test. It was THEN that I finally called Jimmy and
asked him to come down to the yard. Talking to him
sooner would've been the sensible thing to do, but I didn't want
to take a chance that he'd come up with some laughably obvious
reason the brake-runner system wouldn't work. At the time, my
thinking on the subject was pretty clear: There were only two
ways were going to be able to stop the Rocket Car, either by
using a drogue chute or by Beck's braking system. And although I
wasn't too keen on the idea of taking one of my Dad's parachutes,
I'd do it if it was the only way to get the Rocket Car to work.
But even if we DID use a drogue chute, the car would need
an additional braking system anyway. A parachute will SLOW a car,
but it won't STOP it. You still need regular brakes for that.

The way I figured it, we'd need Beck's idea no matter what
happened. So I decided to show Jimmy the braking system I was
building and see what he thought. If he pointed out some reason
why it was completely foolish, I'd show him Dad's parachute
collection, then tell him that the brake runners were the STANDBY
system, and we were actually going to use a parachute to slow the
car to reasonable speed.

It not only sounded reasonable, but it kept me from
looking like a total asshole.

All my planning was unnecessary, though. When Jimmy heard
me describe the rail-braking system and saw what I'd done to the
car so far, he was VERY impressed. I think he was also a little
pissed off that Beck had come up with the idea, and not him. But
here's a thought that never occurred to me back in 1978, and to
be honest, I'm glad it didn't: We never really had any proof that
it was BECK who came up with the idea. For all we know, it was
SAL who dreamed up the notion of using runners to stop the car.
Yes, yes, I know, it's a ridiculous thought. Like having your
pet hamster wake up one morning with a revolutionary process
for splitting atoms. After all, we're talking about the guy who
wanted the pilot of the Rocket Car to hoist a goddamned ANCHOR
out the window to slow down.

Still, you never know. And Jimmy, if you're reading this,
I'm sorry I even brought it up now. I know you'll lose some sleep
over it. But I couldn't resist.

Anyway, Jimmy DID give the braking system his stamp of
approval, and I never had to admit that Dad had a bunch of
parachutes stashed in the shed. The only reservation Jimmy had
about the system was one that should've been obvious to me from
the start: heat. If the car were traveling as fast as we expected
it to, rubber-coated planks pressing against metal rails
would probably get hotter than hell. On the other hand, this
WAS basically the same system used by every car on the road, as
well as racing cars. Drum and disc brakes are essentially nothing
more than pads or shoes pressing against moving pieces of steel
to stop the car. The only difference between their system and
ours was that standard brakes pressed brake pads against steel
that was spinning, while ours used steel moving in a straight
line. And even though our car would be traveling a lot faster
than most, we had much more overall braking surface. So Jimmy and
I talked about ways to cool the runners for awhile, just in case
heat buildup turned out to be a real problem. Actually, I think
Jimmy might have made the heat problem sound worse than it really
was, just so Beck wouldn't get ALL the credit for solving the
brake problem. But to give credit where it's due, we DID wind up
with a heat problem, so whatever Jimmy's motivations might
have been, it's a good thing I listened to him.

Then again, if I'd ignored him, I doubt it would've
changed the final outcome too much.

With the conceptual details taken care of, all that was
left was construction. Even though the braking and brake-cooling
systems were the hardest part of the car to fabricate, it didn't
take long to get them built and installed. Bolting the runners to
the car frame was quick work, and even though it took a little
doing to get the air-dump valve connected to all four
shock absorbers, I had plenty of materials to work with laying
around the scrap yard. After removing the valve stems from the
air inlets to the shocks, I attached sections of air-compressor
hose to the valves themselves. The other ends of the hoses ran to
an air valve that started life as the door-opening lever on a
city bus. With the lever in the "open" position, all four shocks
could be inflated from a single air inlet near the dump
lever. Once the shocks were pressurized, releasing the lever kept
them inflated until the lever was pushed again.

I first tested the air-valve system on Tuesday afternoon,
and when I saw that it worked the way it was supposed to, I
immediately called Beck. He came to the yard with Sal, and the
three of us took turns raising and lowering the car for almost an
hour before the novelty wore off. Despite the fact that it wasn't
very exciting to watch, there was something distinctly
satisfying about seeing the system work the way it was supposed
to. Of course Beck was more anxious to "take the car for a spin"
than ever, and he actually got a little pissed off when I pointed
out that we weren't out of the woods yet. There was still a heat
problem to deal with, but this detail didn't cut much ice with
Beck. He was positive that it wouldn't be a problem, which meant
that our next step was to take the Chevy out and light the
rocket. So rather than dwell on the heat problem, I said "Haul it
out WHERE, and light the rocket with WHAT?"

That took the wind out of his sails in a hurry.

See, we still hadn't considered how we were going to
ignite the JATO, but to be honest, this wasn't a major sticking
point. There was a rubber plug in the end of the exhaust nozzle
of the rocket I'd inspected, and it seemed logical to assume that
some sort of igniter plugged into the hole. Probably an
electrical fuse, something along the lines of the igniters used
for model rockets. Whatever fueled the rocket (ammonium
perchlorate, I later found out) was no doubt highly flammable,
and shouldn't be too tough to ignite.

But I knew I could come up with something better than a
fuse.

A much bigger problem was the launch site. Beck got sulky
and petulant when I pointed out that we had no idea where we'd
actually run the car, but he didn't argue too much. Even if I
agreed to hoist the car onto Dad's flatbed right then and there
and drive around searching for a spot to use, I'm sure Beck
would've realized how dumb the idea was before we even got out of
the yard. So I put Beck in charge of finding a suitable launch
site, which I'd have done even if he wasn't being a royal pain in
the ass and keeping me from my work. His Dad's four-wheel drive
was the perfect vehicle for location-scouting, and he and Sal
were more familiar with the surrounding desert than anyone I
knew. Beck and Sal headed for the gates deep in conversation, and
I got back to work.

The brake-cooling system I ended up building was pretty
cheesy, I'll be the first to admit that. But since we weren't
even sure it was necessary, I didn't want to spend a lot of time
messing with it. I ran a length of garden hose along each wooden
runner, near the point where the runner was attached to the car.
Took the ends near the front of each runner, and led them
into the empty engine compartment. I tied off the ends under the
car, then punched holes along the sections near the runners with
an awl. Water entering the ends in the engine compartment would
leak out through the perforations, soaking the runners and pads.

I told you it was pretty cheesy.

The only part of the cooling arrangement that even came
CLOSE to sophistication was the result of a brainstorm that came
to me while I was strapping a five-gallon jerry can under the
hood of the Rocket Car. I started putting the sprinkler system
together with the idea that we'd simply open a valve before
launch, letting water leak out of the hoses and onto
the runners for the duration of the run. But while I was
attaching the jerry can, a better method occurred to me. Instead
of attaching the garden hoses to a valve, I drilled a pair of
holes directly into the top of the jerry can, and fed the hoses
through the holes. Then I drilled a third, smaller hole, and
connected another hose from the jerry can to the air-dump handle
for the shock absorbers. I sealed all the hose connections
with massive amounts of rubber cement, then called it quits for
the day.

No word from Beck or Sal that night, so I assumed finding
a launch site wasn't as easy as they'd thought it would be.

When I checked the Rocket Car the next day, the rubber
cement sealant had dried to the consistency of a hockey puck, so
I tested the entire system. I filled the air shocks from Dad's
portable compressor, then closed the dump valve. Filled the jerry
can with water, and screwed the top down tight. Said a quick
prayer, and hit the dump-valve lever. There was a slight hiss
as the air rushed out of the shocks, through the dump valve.
But instead of being vented into the open, the last air-hose I'd
installed directed the escaping air INTO the jerry can full of
water under the hood, forcing water OUT through the sprinkler
hoses. When I checked under the car there was an impressive
puddle, and water was still jetting out of the holes in the
garden hoses.

I was thrilled beyond words.

And when Jimmy saw the whole system in action a few days
later, he said he was "..really impressed with my application of
Bernoulli's Principle." Hell, I didn't even know the Italians
BUILT rocket cars.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

The Rocket Car Chapter 4

2007-04-14T09:35:00.000-06:00

LUXURY AT THE SPEED OF SOUND

One aspect of the Rocket Car legend that always tickles me
is that no matter how much the story varies, the make, model and
year of the car is ALWAYS specified. Sure this is a nice detail
to have on hand, but considering the details left OUT of the
description, it looks... sorta silly. In the Darwin Award
version, there's no mention of which highway the car was on, or
even whereabouts in Arizona the story took place. And Arizona is
a pretty big place. There's also no mention of any investigation
that took place afterwards. But despite all these oversights,
the story DID specify that the car was a 1967 Chevy Impala. I
think the reason this detail is always supplied is because it's
critical to make the listener think the test pilot at least
LOOKED cool when he flew into the cliff. You'll never hear
someone tell a story about a guy in a rocket-powered K-car or a
Volkswagen Beetle. It has to be a car that DESERVES to have a
rocket attached to it.

In the case of our Rocket Car, we gave some serious
thought to not even using a car body. As soon as we got back to
the scrapyard, Beck wanted to weld one of the JATO's to a bucket
car, stick the car on a track, and light the rocket. He was
doubtless the craziest member of Team Rocket Car, and if I'd been
willing to go along with his idea, I have no doubt he'd have
climbed in and lit the fuse himself. Fortunately, they were
MY JATOs, so I had veto power over all the dumb ideas. Or at
least the REAL dumb ones. Of course sticking a JATO on a bucket
car was out of the question, but building a simple platform on a
bucket-car base with a car seat bolted onto it sounded like the
easiest way to build a rocket sled. Actually, this is pretty much
what the NASA rocket sleds looked like. But this
arrangement would mean that each run would be limited to a single
passenger, and I only had four JATO's. When Jimmy and I discussed
the details of the project, he seemed pretty confident that the
thrust from the rocket would be enough to push a four-passenger
car at a reasonable speed. And if we used a car body, we'd have a
windshield, doors, and some degree of protection if anything went
wrong. Granted, a car body wouldn't do us much good if we hit
something (like a canyon wall) at jet-fighter speed, but it was
better than wiping out in a director's chair at 300 miles per
hour.

Despite Beck's impatience, I got started building the
Rocket Car the next day.

Our car wasn't a 1967 Chevy Impala, but a 1959 Chevy
Impala. A bone-white Impala, with a red interior. I know how
bizarre that sounds, but once a story starts to mutate into a
legend, there's no telling which parts of the truth will stick.
Obviously the Chevy Impala part made the cut.

We didn't choose the `59 Impala for it's aerodynamics or
structural qualities, but because one was available. My father
happened to have one, resting on cinderblocks, in a forgotten
corner of his lot. Engine, transmission and wheels were all
missing, sold to Jimmy's father at some point. The only reason
this car was otherwise intact was that Chevrolet only used the
1959 style for a single year, which meant the body parts would
only be usable on another 1959 Impala. This particular car was
obscure enough so that once the mechanical parts were stripped,
it was pretty much useless. And this is why what was left of my
Dad's `59 Impala was left to decay in a field.

Fortunately, the leftovers were all that we needed.

Cutting the bodies from the bucket cars was a chore, but
not as bad as I expected. The thin metal of the buckets was
rusted to tatters in spots, so burning through it was fairly
easy. But despite this, I still used almost an entire tank of oxy
getting the bodies cut away from the bases, and I knew my
Dad would be suspicious when he found I'd used all the oxygen in
an almost- full tank. Luckily, Jimmy was able to help out in
that department. When I told him about my predicament the
following weekend, he simply took my empty oxygen cylinder and
swapped it with one of the dozen or so his Dad kept on hand at
his body shop. My father might notice if a brand new tank of
oxygen were suddenly empty, but Jimmy's Dad's shop used so much
gas he'd never know the difference.

Attaching the cut-away rail car bases to the Chevy frame
was pretty easy too. Jimmy stressed the importance of getting the
two sets of wheels precisely aligned, but it wasn't that hard.
The old Chevy frame had plenty of places for bolts and welds, so
picking spots where the wheels would line up was a snap. And
since the Impala was already up on blocks, it was no problem to
slide the wheel frames underneath and lift them into place with a
floor jack, then weld away. I'm sure that these days my students
would laugh like hell at the thought of me laying underneath a
car with an oxyacetylene torch in my hand, but the fact is, I
learned how to draw a bead and cut metal when I was 14 or 15
years old. Growing up around a scrapyard DID have certain
advantages, and learning how to work with a torch was one of
them. So aligning the wheel frames and welding them to the
car was a fairly straightforward process.

The propulsion unit (hah!) consisted of a five-foot length
of steel water pipe, welded to both the rear bucket car AND the
Chevy's frame. This might sound like overkill, but at the time I
had no idea how much thrust to expect from the JATO bottle, so it
seemed best to err on the side of caution. I plugged the end of
the pipe facing the front of the car with a slug of scrap steel
and welded it into place, and even cut the center out of
a threaded cap to screw onto the exhaust end to hold the
JATO bottle securely once it was installed. The end-cap seemed
like a good idea while I was doing it, but Jimmy laughed like
hell when he came in the following weekend and saw my handiwork.
He pointed at the steel cap, and said "That rocket is gonna be
pushing against the car hard enough to make it fly like a bullet,
and you're afraid it'll fall out the BACK end?"

What can I say? This is one of the reasons Jimmy was doing
all the brainwork.

Unfortunately, his critique wasn't only limited to the job
I did on the "propulsion unit". He also asked how I planned to
stop the thing once the ride was over, and I had to admit that I
didn't have the slightest idea.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

TOUGH BRAKES

In the Darwin version of the Rocket Car tale, the car
burned out it's brakes instantly, and was eventually stopped by a
cliff face. We hoped to come up with a somewhat more elegant
braking system, and we did. But not
without considerable brainwork.

The night Jimmy inspected my work on the Chevy, all four
members of Team Rocket Car gathered at a neighborhood bar to
discuss the considerable problem of stopping the car once it was
moving. When I started putting the car together, I assumed Jimmy
would have some idea what we'd do. But as it turned out, he was
just as clueless as the rest of us. So we gathered at the bar
in the hope that ONE of us could come up with a workable idea.

Of course the lack of any way to stop the Rocket Car was
considered a very minor point with Beck. He was perfectly willing
to haul the car out to a long stretch of empty track, get in,
fire it up, and hope he slowed down before he ran out of track.
In his eyes, worrying about something as trivial as brakes was a
sign of cowardice.

Like I said, he was out of his fucking mind.

Fortunately, Beck didn't have much say about the
situation, so we decided that we wouldn't launch the car until we
had SOME sort of braking mechanism to slow it down.

The most popular idea was, naturally, a drogue chute. The
Spirit of America used one, as did a few types of fighter planes,
top fuel dragsters, etc. But like the optimal solutions to most
of our problems, the question was where to FIND one. Nobody had
any idea how to go about getting a parachute. Nobody except for
me, that is. My father actually had six Army surplus parachutes
sitting in a storage shed near the office at the scrapyard, the
spoils of particularly good auction years before. Five of them
were standard personnel chutes, and one was a massive
cargo-drop canopy. But Dad also KNEW he had six of them. He'd
started out with a dozen, and occasionally sold one to a skydiver
or army/navy store. A good surplus parachute was worth upwards of
$200. There was no telling what the cargo chute would be worth to
the right buyer. But if one were to turn up missing, Dad would
certainly notice. Of course we might have gotten away with
using a parachute, then returning it once we were finished with
it, but even this presented problems. It might work okay for the
FIRST ride, but how about the second? I certainly knew nothing
about parachute rigging. All I was sure of was that there was a
LOT of cloth that had to be stuffed into a very small pack.

Besides, I'd already stuck my neck out pretty far for the
sake of the Rocket Car, and I didn't want to stick it out any
further. So I kept the existence of Dad's parachutes to myself,
and hoped someone else would come up with an alternate plan.

Using a retro-rocket was discussed briefly, but it only
took Jimmy a minute to punch THAT idea full of holes. Even though
rigging a retro would mean nothing more than sticking a second
JATO on the front of the car to oppose the one in the rear, it
would mean a maximum of two rides before we ran out of JATO's.
This much was obvious. What wasn't obvious was the physics of the
whole thing, which Jimmy was happy to explain. Firing the first
rocket would provide a huge forward thrust for a very
short time, but a retro rocket would produce an IDENTICAL thrust
(if we were lucky) in the opposite direction, for the same
duration. Which would mean the only way to bring the car to a
dead stop would be to fire the retro as soon as the thrust rocket
burned out. That would result in a 0-to-300 acceleration in
seconds, followed by a 300-to-0 DEceleration in the same amount
of time.

Doesn't sound like much fun, does it?

And if the retro was fired a little too late, it could
easily result in the whole rig traveling BACKWARDS. Possibly at a
high rate of speed. Or even worse, the retro might be a dud. Or
the ignition system might not work.

Needless to say, we shitcanned the retro-rocket idea in a
hurry.

Sal suggested outfitting the car with a huge anchor, one
that could be heaved out the window at the critical moment. The
rest of us suggested that Sal shut the fuck up and get us another
round of beers.

I brought up one idea I'd been toying with, stretching a
cable across the track and fitting the Rocket Car with a tailhook
to slow it down. Why not? After all, aircraft carriers had been
using this system to stop incoming planes for years, and it
seemed to work just fine. But before I could explain the idea,
Beck started laughing his ass off, then asked if I wanted to use
a rubber inner-tube to catch the car, or just tie a rope between
two fence-posts. And I clearly remember how much this pissed me
off. Here was a guy willing to strap a military rocket onto his
back and sit in a rusty rail-car while someone lit the fuse, but
he was laughing at MY ideas. Unfortunately, he DID have a point.
It wasn't until years later that I found out how aircraft
carriers absorbed the shock of a plane catching an arresting wire
(it involves huge pistons moving through cylinders of hydraulic
fluid), but I knew that rigging a similar system would be next to
impossible. Putting a tailhook on the car and catching
an arresting wire was simple. But it sure as hell couldn't be
stationary wire. There would have to be some system to absorb the
impact of a car moving at high speeds, and we couldn't come up
with anything. We went through a slew of ideas for mechanical
systems, but I rejected them all because they were either too
complicated, too expensive, or too impractical.

Jimmy pointed out that rocket sleds usually ended up in a
pool of water, which both acted as a brake and cooled the whole
contraption down. Beck pointed out that all the narrow-gauge
railroad tracks HE'D ever seen were in the middle of the desert,
where pools of water were pretty tough to come by.

Overall, we ended up batting exactly zero for the evening.

I remember that I was pretty damned depressed when Jimmy
and I left the bar that night, despite the fact that I was pretty
drunk. Considering the progress I'd made on the rocket car up to
that point, I figured that a braking system would be a minor
point. Surely if we put all three of our heads together (well,
3-1/2, counting Sal) we could come up with SOMETHING.

But it hadn't happened.

Or at least it hadn't happened while we were all sitting
at the bar. Jimmy tried to blow some optimistic sunshine up my
ass while we walked up the street toward our houses, saying that
one of us might be able to come up with something later, once we
were all sober. I didn't consider it likely. Beck and Sal seemed
to think better when they were drunk, and they were both pretty
shitfaced when we left them. If they hadn't come up with
anything at the bar, chances are they never would. And Jimmy and
I weren't having any brainstorms drunk OR sober.

Anyway, there's no telling how Sal and Beck spent the rest
of their evening, but the next morning my Dad woke me up by
pounding on my bedroom door. When I finally peeled my eyes open,
he asked me who was delivering my car parts in the middle of the
night.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

Part of my incomprehension was from a hangover, but even
if I'd spent the previous night drinking Kool Aid, I would've
been pretty confused. So he led me out to the front porch and
pointed to a bundle of four thick metal rods, tied together with
twine, laying on the porch swing. When I looked closer, I saw
that they were actually a set of heavy-duty air-adjustable car
shock absorbers. Jammed under the twine was a note written in
what looked like crayon on a crumpled paper bag.

It said this:

Problum solved.

Call me later

Major Tom

----------------------------------------------------------------

The Rocket Car Chapter 3

2007-04-14T09:34:00.000-06:00

TRAIN OF THOUGHT

One thing that remains constant in every re-telling of the
Rocket Car legend is that it reportedly took place somewhere in
the southwest United States. I've heard versions stating that the
whole thing happened in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, western
Texas and southwestern California, and in each case, the location
seemed to be a critical part of the plot. Which makes sense,
considering the premise that the story is based on. The Rocket
Car would have to be launched on a fairly long, flat stretch of
road, away from prying eyes. The Mojave is an ideal place to find
such a road, as anyone who's ever driven across the desert will
tell you. The Darwin Award version specifies Arizona, which is
covered with roads that would be ideal for the event described in
the story. But one thing that strikes me as incredibly silly
about this version is the fact that the test pilot chose to
test his vehicle on a road with a CURVE in it. The story
specifies that the cliff where the car impacted was at the "apex
of a curve", and that the test pilot ran under JATO power for 2.4
miles before hitting the turn and becoming airborne.

This suggests a pretty obvious question: If you were going
to test drive a rocket-powered car, what sort of road would YOU
pick for the ride? Would you choose a section of highway less
than three miles from a turn in the road that overlooked a
canyon?

I don't think I would.

Even if Jimmy hadn't been around to talk sense into me and
I HAD attempted to drive the rocket car, I'm sure I could've
found a stretch of highway that didn't include a hairpin turn.
The desert contains thousands of miles of highways and dirt
roads, and it would've been much harder to find the kind of road
in the Darwin story than to find a nice level straightaway. On
the other hand, when Wile E. Coyote lights the big skyrocket tied
to HIS jalopy, he ALWAYS seems to be near an unexpected turn. I
guess whoever wrote the Darwin story must have assumed this
was standard procedure.

Fortunately, highways aren't the only long, straight
thoroughfares through the desert. After Jimmy was through
demolishing my plans to build the Rocket Car, he pointed out that
the control problem could easily be overcome if the car was
actually a rocket SLED, running on rails rather than asphalt.
Mounting the rocket on a railroad car would not only solve
the problems of control and traction, but if an ABANDONED stretch
of track was used, traffic wouldn't even be an issue. And the
Mojave is covered with abandoned railroad track, most of it the
old-fashioned narrow-gauge kind used for mining trains near the
turn of the century. I knew of at least three such pieces of
track within five miles of town. Finding a railroad car that
would actually run on the old-fashioned track was a whole nother
story, but by the time Jimmy finished explaining his idea, I
already had a plan in mind to deal with that part of the
equation.

The following morning I found myself bouncing across the
desert in a battered four-wheel drive pickup with the remaining
two members of Team Rocket Car (my tongue is firmly in cheek when
I use THAT term), Sam and Beck. Beck and I were almost as close
as Jimmy and I when we were kids, but Beck had a "wild streak"
that caused most of the trouble we got into from time to time.
During high school his "wild streak" got out of control, Beck
turned into "one of those dope-smoking degenerates" (Mom's
preferred term) and he dropped out a year shy of graduation.
Sal was Beck's junior brother, junior not only by calendar-count
but by any sort of I.Q. measurement. Sal wasn't retarded or
anything, but people tended to use phrases like "not too swift"
and "a few bricks short of a load", a lot more often than usual
when he was around. Just like "dope smoking degenerate" tended to
pop up in conversations that involved Beck.

Okay, so they weren't exactly Nobel Prize laureates, but I
didn't have much choice in my selection of assistants. I needed
their truck.

The truck actually belonged to Beck's father, who used it
in the performance of his job. Whatever THAT was. Nobody knew for
sure what Beck's Dad did for a living but the truck was ugly and
battered, sat on huge mud-grabber tires, and came with a massive
454 engine. Beck's father would drive the thing out of town
occasionally, sometimes staying gone for days at a time. When he
returned, the truck always looked as if it had spent
the entire time driving around in the desert. If Beck knew what
his father did for a living, he never said. But Jimmy and I
figured the man used his pickup for transporting something (ahem)
back and forth from remote desert locations. Contraband
vegetation arriving at an isolated airstrip was
one possibility, and people desperate to become American citizens
without a lot of government interference was another. The only
relevant fact is that the truck was very good for cruising the
desert, which is why we used it to visit an abandoned silver mine
a few miles from town that morning. The mine had been out of
commission and the entrance boarded over for as long as any of us
could remember, but at least a few brave kids had explored the
interior of the shaft. Everyone knew there was nothing of value
left in the mine, with the exception of some ancient equipment
that was worthless, even as scrap. Worthless to most people,
anyway. That's because very few people went into the mine LOOKING
for old mining equipment.

We did. And we found some, too.

Actually, Beck himself was one of the juvenile delinquents
who'd poked around in the mine years earlier, so he knew just
what to expect when we pried off the old wooden planks covering
the entrance. Less than a dozen feet into the shaft was a train
of ancient bucket-cars, the tiny railcars used to haul ore out of
the mine while it was in use. Probably parked so close to the
entrance to discourage people from going any further. I wasn't
too thrilled about entering a man-made tunnel that could cave in
at any moment, but I could see from my flashlight beam that the
"train" only consisted of three bucket-cars linked together. And
despite the fact that they'd probably been parked for forty years
or more, they seemed to be in reasonably good condition. Shit
lasts forever in the desert, it really does. Beck dragged a
towchain into the mine, looped it around the hitch on the last
car, then used the pickup to drag the whole line of cars
closer to the entrance. When the cars were nearly clear of the
overhang, I went inside and used a five-pound pony-sledge to bash
the connection on the last car until it came free. When Beck
threw the pickup into gear and dragged the first two cars clear
of the mine, and the metal wheels screeched so loud I thought it
would bring the shaft down on my head. Of course the wheels were
frozen with rust, but they were far from destroyed. The
first thing we did when we got the bucket cars into the light of
day was turn them upside-down, then slop grease onto the axles.
After a few well-placed whacks with the sledge, we got the wheels
to turn. A few more whacks, and we had them turning freely enough
to push the bucket-cars up a ramp and into the back of the
pickup. Once the bucket cars were loaded, we replaced the boards
over the mine entrance, then took the cars back to
the scrapyard.

The Rocket Car was off to a fine start.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

The Rocket Car Chapter 2

2007-04-14T09:33:00.000-06:00

The tale continues. Again with respect to the unknown author Chapter 2 of " The Rocket Car".

WHY THE ROCKET CAR DOESN'T WORK

One thing I want to make clear from the start is that I'm
not pissing on the Rocket Car legend purely as an academic
exercise. When my friends and I set out to build the vehicle we
test-fired in the spring of 1978, a real-life jet-powered,
road-traveling car was exactly what we had in mind. Craig
Breedlove was busy breaking land speed records in the Spirit of
America, Evel Knievel had graduated from "biker"to "payload"
while attempting to jump the Snake River Canyon a few years
earlier, and rocket-powered vehicles were a pretty popular
notion. Unfortunately, machines like this require a lot of time
and money and engineering skill to build and operate.

My friends and I had none of these things.

In 1978, I was 22 years old and still living with my
parents. My father owned a scrapyard, twenty-two acres of barren
desert scrub ideally suited to having junk thrown on it. The yard
was a salvage smorgasbord, covered with everything from dead
water heaters to junked airplane cockpits. And since we lived
near a major Army storage facility, a lot of the scrap my father
bought and sold came from government auctions. To be brutally
honest, the main yard looked like a cross between Sanford &
Sons and Apocalypse Now. My father would go to the auctions held
at the post from time to time, bid on pre-marked lots of God only
knew what, then send me out he next day with the big flatbed to
collect the latest pile of junk he'd bought. Plenty of people who
went to these auctions ended up with nothing more than tons of
unusable junk that was worth less than they paid for it, but my
Dad always seemed to find the lots that contained valuable stuff.
He also knew plenty of people who owned military surplus stores,
and usually had some idea of what was in demand and what wasn't.
But since the nearby Army base was a HUGE storage depot,
the auctions weren't the sort of affairs that the average
man-off-the-street would be interested in. The lots for sale were
usually measured by the ton, and if a lot seemed to have a few
items you were interested in, you had to buy the whole
mess. Because of this, my Dad ended up with an amazing amount
of unusable military surplus, things like gas-masks and vehicle
parts that were worthless in the civilian world.

But from time to time, we'd get weapons, too.

No, he never bought a pile of crap and ended up with a
crate full of M-16's or a Shrike missile, the military was
usually careful enough to keep THAT from happening. But from time
to time we DID end up with stuff we weren't supposed to have.
Once day I opened a crate marked "heater assembly" and found it
full of smoke grenades. My Dad found a steel ammo box full
of blank M-60 rounds once. And even though these instances were
a rarity, the Army had a very strict policy toward scrap dealers
who found such things: You had to give them back. No two ways
about it. Before even being allowed to place a bid, dealers at an
auction were required to sign several forms, one of which stated
that they'd return any "explosive, ordnance, fuse, detonator, or
other chemically viable part or assembly of a weapons system." I
remember that paragraph well, since it's the only part of
the Army red tape that ever directly pertained to me. The
penalties for non-compliance outlined at the end of the paragraph
sounded pretty scary (five-figure fines, possible imprisonment,
etc), and were enough to make my Dad return the crate of smoke
grenades, but not the blank ammo. These were judged to be too
trivial to warrant a drive to the base, and my Dad ended up
keeping them draped over a file cabinet in his office, as a
decoration.

Of course I'm telling you this because it's how I managed
to get hold of the JATO bottle we used for our rocket car.
Actually there were four of them, each in a long, hay-filled
crate with "BARREL ASSEMBLY" stenciled on the side. One day I
went out to the base to pick up a load of junk my Dad had bought
at the auction, and while we were going through the stuff back at
the yard, I spotted the crates and took a look. And even though I
didn't know what the hell it was at first glance, I knew
it wasn't a barrel for ANYTHING. The JATO bottle was a round
metal cylinder about four feet long, and less than a foot in
diameter. At first I thought it was a gas cylinder of some sort,
but written on the side in red paint were the words "M-23 JET
ASSIST UNIT". And rather than the sort of valve assembly you'd
see on a gas cylinder, the end of the bottle had an inverted
funnel shape to it, with a rubber plug at the lowest point. It
was obviously a rocket of some sort. And judging from the weight
(it took two people to even budge the things) they were still
full of something.

Once I figured out what they were, I decided I had to call
Jimmy.

Jimmy and I met in the third grade (or thereabouts), and
were best friends for most of our growing-up. His family lived
just down the street, and his father ran an auto body shop in
town. On more than one occasion Jimmy's Dad and my own traded
parts or services, and our families were pretty close. But while
I went to work for my father after graduating high school,
Jimmy went to college to study mechanical engineering. He had a
natural talent for figuring out things in the physical world, but
was never much good at putting them into practice. He could
design and visualize, but when it came to hands-on applications,
he just wasn't very talented.

Nevertheless, he was the first person I showed the JATO
bottles to.

Actually, I didn't show them to anyone right away. The
campus where Jimmy took classes was almost 150 miles away, so he
spent his weekdays in a rented room and only came home on the
weekends. I found the JATO's on a Wednesday, which meant I had
three days before I could tell Jimmy about them. More than enough
time for me to cook up the idea of the Rocket Car. As a matter
of fact, as soon as I realized what that dull metal
cylinder represented, I thought about attaching it to a car and
taking a jet-propelled ride. I spent the rest of Wednesday,
Thursday and Friday planning how it could be done. The principle
certainly seemed simple enough. Nail the rocket onto one of the
junkers in my Dad's field, point it down a straight stretch of
road, and light the mother up. Sure there'd be minor details to
be worked out, but the basic idea was fairly straightforward.

All I can say is thank God I consulted with Jimmy before
actually doing anything. If it wasn't for his intervention, I'd
have probably ended up a damp spot on a highway somewhere.

Jimmy came over to the house on Saturday morning, we drove
to the yard, and I showed him the rocket. He immediately knew
what it was, or at least what it seemed to be. A solid fuel
rocket, the kind they'd used in Vietnam to give cargo planes a
kick in the ass when they needed to take off from
short runways. Very simple, very straightforward. Also very
dangerous. I described the idea of the Rocket Car to him, and at
first he was pretty enthusiastic. But after thinking the whole
thing over for awhile, he not only lost his enthusiasm, but made
me promise I wouldn't actually DO anything with the JATO until he
had time to check a few things out. I agreed, mainly because I
knew I'd need Jimmy's help if I was ever going to make the
Rocket Car work.

We talked about design possibilities for the rest of the
weekend, and when Jimmy went back to campus, I stashed the JATO's
in the back of a wasted milk truck rusting in the field. When
Jimmy came back the following weekend, we sat down at his kitchen
table and he explained PRECISELY why the rocket car wouldn't
work.

It was a sobering (and depressing) lecture.

The main problem was control. Jimmy explained that the
JATO bottle would produce something like 2,500 pounds of thrust
(albeit for a very short time), which sounded like more than
enough to ensure a fun ride. Unfortunately, this huge amount of
thrust would not only be unstoppable once it was started, it
would probably have to be applied to a point on the car
that wasn't designed to handle such a such a force. Under
normal circumstances, a car gets it's forward thrust from the
back axle, by way of tires against the pavement. Which means that
a normal car will never exceed a certain amount of thrust due to
the fact that the tires HAVE to touch the pavement to move the
car forward. Jimmy described the whole thing using top-fuel
dragsters as an example. When the driver hits the gas, the back
end of the car tries to lift into the air due to the sudden
force applied to the rear axle. But as soon as the ass end starts
to lift, the tires lose traction, and the thrust decreases. The
back end drops, thrust is restored, and the process starts all
over again. So a car of a given weight using driven wheels can
only get so much forward thrust. The limiting factors are the
weight, the distribution of the weight, size of the tires, and
torque applied to the wheels. The fact that a car uses driven
wheels creates a self-damping system that ensures the wheels will
stay on the ground (at least most of the time). The only reason
dragsters and funny cars pop wheelies is that they use oversized
tires that screw up the relationship between torque and traction.
Unfortunately, a rocket car has no such restraints. A massive
amount of thrust is suddenly being applied to a point on the
car that wasn't designed to handle it, and there's no telling
what happens next. Maybe the front end lifts off the ground.
Maybe the rear. Maybe the ass end would slew around sideways. The
only thing that was certain was that the car would NOT go in a
straight line, and would continue to not go in a straight line at
a VERY high rate of speed.

Naturally I asked how Craig Breedlove managed to drive the
Spirit of America at 600+ miles an hour, but I knew the answer
before I even spit the question out. He hired a team of aerospace
engineers and rocket scientists to design a car that was BUILT to
have a jet engine sticking out it's ass.

After hearing this, Jimmy didn't even have to outline the
rest of the reasons why my idea wouldn't work, but he did anyway.
There was also the fact that store-bought tires couldn't handle
the sort of acceleration a rocket would provide, which was why
all land-speed record cars used custom-made, solid-rubber tires.
Simply SPINNING a regular tire at rocket-car speeds would
probably create enough centrifugal force to tear it right off the
rim. And if that wasn't enough, there was the problem of stopping
the thing once it got rolling. And structural stress. And so on
and so on.

By this time I'd pretty much decided that the whole idea
was stupid and suicidal, which was why I was amazed when Jimmy
proceeded to tell me exactly how the rocket car COULD work.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

The Rocket Car Chapter 1

2007-04-14T09:26:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the delay. I've been busy with a sick pup. But like I said this is a story that Micheal found on the Internet and I enjoyed reading so with all due respect to the unknown author here is chapter 1 of "The Rocket Car"

FAST FORWARD
-----------------------------------------------------------------

The first thing you should know about the legend of the
Rocket Car (especially if you got the story via E-mail or the
Web) is that it's been around a LOT longer than most people
think. It started years ago, as a vague rumor passed from one guy
to the next by word of mouth, usually in bars or during
lunch-break bullshit sessions. The kind of story someone hears
from a friend who read it in a magazine, or a half-remembered
newspaper story that someone read a long time ago. It's a story
that comes out of nowhere, gets passed around for awhile, then
dies out, like one of those weird strains of flu that keep coming
back every few years. The period of dormancy varies, but whenever
the story springs back to life, it seems to spread like a grass
fire. I used to think it was funny how the legend of the Rocket
Car managed to spread so far (and FAST) purely by word-of-mouth,
but now that it's become a subject of Internet interest, it's
popularity has become downright spooky.

Just in case you never heard the legend before (in which
case I can't imagine why you'd be reading this), here's the bare
bones of it: Once upon a time, in some out-of-the way part of the
country (take your pick of locations) a maniac took a rocket of
some sort, and mounted it on the back of a car (make and model
depend on automotive trends when the story is told). The maniac
then sped down a deserted stretch of highway, and when he reached
an appropriate spot, he lit the rocket. Unfortunately, the rocket
(which was either a JATO bottle, a surplus ICBM engine, or an
experimental Shuttle booster) proved to be far more powerful than
the maniac anticipated. The car reached an incredible speed in a
matter of seconds (somewhere between 150 miles per hour and Warp
9) at which point the car's brakes and steering became...
ineffective. This development would've been bad enough on a
straightaway, but through some error in planning or navigation,
the maniac found himself hurtling down a road that curved
sharply, not far from where he ignited the rocket. When the car
arrived at the curve, it went straight ahead instead of
negotiating the turn. Pilot and car then flew like an arrow (for
a distance only limited by the imagination of the person telling
the story), before crashing into an inconveniently-placed
mountainside.

Nifty.

I'm sure this sounds pretty ridiculous if it's the first
time you've heard the Legend of the Rocket Car, but that's
because I didn't go out of my way to make it sound good. Most
people DO try to make it sound convincing, embellishing
the story with all sorts of little facts and details to make it
easier to swallow. I've personally heard a dozen versions of this
story over the past 20 years, and I'm constantly amazed at how
the story grows, shrinks, and generally mutates with each
retelling. Maybe I notice these changes more than most people
because I've always paid close attention to this particular
rumor. Oh, I'm not a car expert or an aerospace engineer or
anything, and I really don't have much interest in urban legends.
Even if I did, from an intellectual point of view, this story
isn't as entertaining as some of the others that have come and
gone. The one about McDonalds shoveling worms into the grinders
that produce Big Macs, for instance, beats it by a mile. I only
pay attention to the Rocket Car legend because I'm 99% sure that
I started the whole thing in the spring of 1978.

Not intentionally, of course.

Now, before you draw any conclusions, I don't want you to
get the impression that I, myself, claim to be the maniac who
drove the Rocket Car into the wild blue yonder. I said I was
probably RESPONSIBLE for the rumor, not that I actually performed
the test flight. As far as I know, the flight in question never
happened. Like all legends, the root of the story might be true
(or partially true), but once the tale started circulating, the
root was lost in the embellishments. If the Legend of the Rocket
Car survives, my great-grandchildren will probably end up talking
about a guy from Lunartown who nailed an anti-matter pod onto an
old Apollo moon-rover and flew into the side of Tycho Crater.

That's how it goes with legends.

Like I said, I'm not a rocket scientist or motorhead. I
don't even KNOW any rocket scientists or motorheads. I'm a
high-school biology teacher. I know, this must sound like I'm the
most unqualified person in the world to give opinions about
things like jet-propelled cars, but I wasn't ALWAYS a biology
teacher. The fact that I'm a biology teacher today is only
relevant to the extent that it's responsible for my writing this
story down.

Last year, a week or two before Thanksgiving, I was taking
my class through some of the particulars of evolution ("how human
beings were raised from monkeys" as one of my students phrased
it). We were discussing Charles Darwin and The Origin of Species
when one of my students asked me how Darwin's research ship ever
got the name "H.M.S. Beagle".

Damned good question, when you stop and think about it.

Since I've been teaching this subject for 11 years, it's
rare when a student asks a question I can't answer. But this one
was a real pisser. Anyone who's ever taught in a classroom knows
that sometimes you get a student that likes to play "Stump the
Teacher". A kid who asks questions he doesn't really care about,
just to see if he can find a gap in the teachers knowledge.
Usually these questions are pretty easy to evade or ignore (or
even lie about) but sometimes one will catch my interest. This
was one of them. You have to admit, "The Beagle" IS a pretty dumb
name for a ship that cruised the Galapagos in search of exciting
bird-beak variations. So I told the student that I had no idea
where the ship's name came from, but I'd find out. After all,
I've been teaching the same class for 11 years, so I've amassed a
pretty good variety of books on the subject. Surely the answer
would be in one of them.

Hah. I couldn't find the answer ANYWHERE. My reference books
concerned themselves with headier subjects, the Scopes trial and
genetic mutations and whatnot, NOT the name of Darwin's boat. I
looked through every book I could find, but came up dry. After
exhausting all my research options, I was thinking about
conceding this particular round of Stump the Teacher when one of
my kids asked if I'd looked for the information on the World Wide
Web.

I said "Of course I looked there. It's the first thing I
checked. Go play in traffic."

Truth be told, I not only HADN'T checked the Web, I didn't know
HOW to check it. In addition to being a non-rocket scientist, I'm
not (or at least I wasn't) very interested in computers or the
Internet. I know this is a shameful thing for a teacher to say in
1998, but it's true. I kept MEANING to take a look at the
Internet-connected computers in the school library, just to see
what all the hoo-hah was about, but I simply hadn't gotten around
to it. Actually I was a little bit intimidated by the machines,
and kept putting off the inevitable confrontation due to
embarrassment. Sure, I could've walked into the library during my
free period, sat down at one of the machines and tried to figure
out what to do on my own, but what if I couldn't make it work? It
wouldn't be long before someone spotted my baffled expression and
realized I was completely lost. So the next day I went to the
library during my free period and asked the librarian for help,
feeling like Crocodile Dundee asking how to work the bidet. But
the librarian had obviously dealt with the situation before, and
gave me her ten-minute "Internet For Stupid Teachers" course
without making me feel any dumber than she had to. As soon as she
left me alone with Netscape running and a search engine online, I
typed "Darwin" into space provided, and let the machine do it's
thing. When the results of my search started filling the screen,
the first thing I noticed was that there were over two MILLION
sites listed as being Darwin-related.

The second thing I noticed was that NONE of them seemed to
pertain to Charles Darwin, the most famous naturalist in history.
Instead, they all seemed to focus on "The Darwin Award", an
"...honor (posthumously) bestowed on people who did the most good
for humanity by removing themselves from the communal gene-pool".

Which really isn't a bad idea, when you think about it.

Of course I expected this "award" to be a piece of tongue-
in-cheek humor, the sort of thing that used to make the rounds
via smudgy Xeroxes in the days before E-mail and the World Wide
Web. And that's exactly what it turned out to be. What I WASN'T
prepared for was my very first encounter with the story of the
Rocket Car in print. Not only in print, but in a format that can
reach around the world. When I read the story, I didn't know
whether to laugh or cry or get nauseous, but I think if I were
alone, I'd have done all three. Based on the number of different
Websites cross-referenced to the word "Darwin", I'll bet that if
you read the Rocket Car story from a computer monitor, the
version you saw looked something like the one that follows. The
text, anyway. The high-tech, precision-drafted engineering
diagrams are my own addition. Don't bust my balls about them,
either. I already told you that I'm not a motorhead or a rocket
scientist, and I'm no Leonardo da Vinci, either.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The Arizona Highway Patrol came upon a pile of smoldering
metal embedded into the side of a cliff rising above the road at
the apex of a curve. The wreckage resembled the site of an
airplane crash, but it was a car. The type of car was
unidentifiable at the scene. The lab finally figured out what it
was and what had happened.

It seems that a guy had somehow obtained a JATO unit (Jet
Assisted Take Off-actually a solid fuel rocket) that is used to
give heavy military transport planes an extra "push" for taking
off from short airfields. He had driven his Chevy Impala out into
the desert and found a long, straight stretch of road. Then he
attached the JATO unit to his car, jumped in, got up some speed
and fired off the JATO!

The facts as best could be determined are that the operator
of the 1967 Impala hit JATO ignition at a distance of
approximately 3.0 miles from the crash site. This was established
by the prominent scorched and melted asphalt at that location.
The JATO, if operating properly, would have reached maximum
thrust within 5 seconds, causing the Chevy to reach speeds well
in excess of 350 mph and continuing at full power for an
additional 20-25 seconds. The driver, soon to be pilot, most
likely would have experienced G-forces usually reserved for
dog-fighting F-14 jocks under full afterburners, basically
causing him to become insignificant for the remainder of the
event. However, the automobile remained on the straight highway
for about 2.5 miles (15-20)seconds before the driver applied and
completely melted the brakes, blowing the tires and leaving thick
rubber marks on the road surface, then becoming airborne for an
additional 1.4 miles and impacting the cliff face at a height of
125 feet leaving a blackened crater 3 feet deep in the rock.

Most of the driver's remains were not recoverable; however,
small fragments of bone, teeth and hair were extracted from the
crater and fingernail and bone shards were removed from a piece
of debris believed to be a portion of the steering wheel.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

As I said earlier, for the past 20 years I've kept an eye
out for stories like this, and I've heard plenty of them. But the
stories I'd heard up until then had always been vague and
somewhat skimpy on technical details, making them marginally
easier to swallow. Or at least to repeat. But the Darwin Award
version was different. It was chock full of numbers and
specifics, which is always bad news for a legend. Oh, INITIALLY
it might make the story more believable, but throwing in a lot of
facts and figures also gives the non-believers plenty of details
they can use to refute the story. In the case of the Darwin
Awards version, I'm surprised that anyone, anywhere, believed the
story well enough to repeat it the first time. For instance,
there's the fact that this event was supposedly investigated by
the Arizona Highway Patrol. Well, that's not too hard to check,
is it? One call to the state police in Arizona would be all it
took to get a confirmation or denial. If you don't believe me,
give it a try. You'll get an irritated denial before you've even
finished asking the question. Actually, the AHP is so sick of
answering questions about this whole thing that they may
well hang up in your ear.

Don't feel like making a long-distance call just to have
someone hang up on you? Then ask yourself this: If the Darwin
Award story is true, then why was it never reported in the
national media? Why has nobody ever produced pictures of the
crash site? And how about the unfortunate "pilot"? Nobody was
ever able to attach a name to this person? Specify the location?

If you want to explain these questions away by blaming human
error or police indifference or whatever, that's okay. There's
too much apathy and incompetence in the world to pretend THAT
couldn't be the case. But if you look at the PHYSICS of the
story, you'll see that the whole pile of bullshit is impossible,
regardless of the human angle. It's simple stuff, too. You don't
have to be an aerospace engineer to see what I'm talking about.
For instance, when the Chevy left the road with it's rocket still
going full-blast, why did it go in a straight line? Take a look
at a missile sometime. You'll notice that it's... missile-shaped.
Nice pointy nose, tail fins, stuff like that. It's built that way
so it'll go in a straight line. The 1967 Chevrolet was a nice
looking car, sure. But it doesn't look much like a missile. Mount
a big rocket on a `67 Chevy and it MAY go straight as long as
it's on the ground. But once it got airborne, the weight of the
engine would immediately pull the nose down. And if the JATO was
still blazing away, the car would drill itself into the ground
like a tent-spike before it got fifty feet from the cliff.

This story is obviously bullshit to anyone willing to give
it a little thought, but it persists, mainly because people WANT
it to be true. And most of those people are men. As a story that
got it's start when it was still being shouted across pool tables
in noisy bars, women were left out of the loop until it hit the
Internet. Sort of like the story about the deadly gas that lies
inside the core of a golf ball. Little boys learn this one too,
but not little girls. And when the little boys grow up (to
whatever extent they actually DO grow up), the Golf Ball Toxin
story is replaced with the Rocket Car story.

One "urban legend" debunker attributes the huge popularity
of this story to the fact that it's "...a real-life version of
the Road Runner cartoon. Wile E. Coyote nails an Acme Jato Rocket
onto the back of a Chevy Impala and flies into a canyon wall."

Works for me.

The question is, how did such a story ever get started in
the first place? Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say
that nobody would ever be dumb enough to ATTEMPT a stunt like
this. Anyone who followed the O.J. Simpson trial will probably
agree that there simply aren't any limits to the depths of human
stupidity anymore. It's just mighty unlikely that someone
stupid enough to pilot the Rocket Car would be smart enough to
build it in the first place. The story probably started with an
event that bears some similarity to the final version, a
much SMALLER event that gradually evolved into the final legend.

All I know for sure is that myself and three other guys were
getting up to some awfully weird shit out in the desert back in
the spring of 1978, shit that was MORE than weird enough to start
the Legend of the Rocket Car. And only ONE of us was stupid
enough to be the pilot in the Darwin Awards story.

At least that's what I keep telling myself.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The Real Story

2007-04-12T12:59:00.000-06:00

Well it turns out that my friend did not write the story about the rocket powered car. It was something he found on the Internet. So since it was on the Internet once I guess that it will be again. Starting tomorrow I will post a chapter at a time. For your reading pleasure. I would start today but I don't have access to my electronic copy from here. So watch this space for the "real" story of the Rocket Powered Car from the Darwin Awards. I will not take credit for the tale though I wish I had the talent.

Randy

Micheal's Story

2007-04-06T10:26:00.000-06:00

Micheal is a fellow I work with, whom I would like to consider a friend. He is also an amateur author. He writes short science fiction stories. The kind of thing that would have been published in Asimov Magazine. Although I had heard about his stories I had not yet read one. Until today that is. He emailed me a story about a fellow who takes responsibility for the urban myth of a rocket powered car. You all have heard or read the story but Micheal's version is very good. Not exactly Buck Rogers and Captain Kirk science fiction but a good entertaining tale.

It is an entertaining read. It reminded me of Stephen King's story "The Body" which was made into the movie "Stand By Me". It is a reminiscence about an adventure in the narrator's youth. Not exactly a "coming of age story" but very good (in my opinion) none the less. It's also little like Max Braithwait's "The Night we Stole the Mountie's Car" or Kinsella's "Fence Post Chronicles". When I was reading it I could just picture Micheal sitting back ands telling this tale. He is a very good story teller. And this tale is quite funny. It was just the thing to read on a quiet Good Friday morning. Maybe knowing the author added to the appreciation but I hope that it stands on its own as well as I think it does. (As the old saying goes I may not know literature but I know what I like.)

I think it would make a very good set of posts on my blog. It is broken out into chapters so I could post a chapter a day if I can get his permission. I will ask him when I am back at work on Tuesday. I hope that he will let me post it. It would make a good change from my usual drivel and I could leave you all hanging at the end of the chapter waiting for the next post. (A sadistic little pleasure that I could enjoy.) It would be like the old serials. I have read that Charles Dickens published many of his novels as serial pieces in the paper and that there were near riots in the streets of London when a new chapter came out. I don't imagine that would be the out come with this but it is still a good yarn.

My sister in law is working on the great Canadian novel too. But I have not seen any of her work though I have heard of it for the past 25 years. I guess she is waiting for the great unveiling. I like Micheal's approach better. Turning out short stories and tales. I hope I can get his permission to post this one and the opportunity to read more. Then maybe we can all say we knew him when...

Keep your fingers crossed...

Randy

Back at the Project

2007-03-25T14:34:00.000-06:00

Well it's getting closer, the desk that is. The door and drawer fronts have been kerffed to make them look like a bank of drawers. Something that I would have had the devil of a time doing on the table saw but was very straight forward not to mention upright with the Radial Arm Saw. The saw is mounted above the work on a radial arm so you can see what you are cutting. Unlike a table saw that cuts from the bottom. When you are just cutting a groove you are flying blind with a table saw.

I also constructed the wire box, a chase for the computer wiring that connects the pedestals. It has a hinged front and holes in either end to let you pass wires easily through. It also helps keep them up off the floor and out of sight also a great idea.

Right now I would be working on attaching the door and drawer fronts but the battery on the cordless drill conked out and the spare must have been put away dead too. Note to self "DON'T DO THAT!" So here I am waiting for the batteries to recharge. I have a drill with a cord but it is a big 1/2 inch and it doesn't fit in where I need to drill. Well it fits but you can't hold on to it when its in there. Also the charger is plugged in where I need to plug the drill in. I would unplug the freezer for a minute or two but then if I forgot to plug it back in I would have a lovely mess in a few days. And you know that "sometimers" (like Alzheimer's only less permanent and intermittent) would kick in right about then. You see the basement has never been finished and there is a distinct shortage of circuits. Since we never used to use the basement it was not a problem but it looks like it is something that I will have to rectify and soon if I want to keep using the basement as a workshop.

Guess I could take the dog for a walk while I wait.

Belle want to go for a walk? As if I couldn't guess...

Randy

Quick Note

2007-03-22T07:08:00.000-06:00

Just a quick note today. I have not forgotten everyone its just that we have had company for the past week and I am only now getting back to the desk project.

My mother in law was in town for a couple of weeks and she stayed with us last week so we were kind of busy. She was in from Prince Albert Saskatchewan and arrived just in time to experience a full on Calgary Chinook. There was nearly a foot of snow lying around when she arrived and it was brown when she left. The one day it rained in the morning was warm and sunny in the afternoon and snowing at night. Calgary weather. If you don't like what you have wait 20 minutes.

I am back on the desk again. Just little things. Trim around the pedestals installed. Yesterday I made up the parts for the wire box that connects them. I'll put that together on the weekend along with finishing up the false drawer fronts and door and the keyboard drawer. Then all I will have left is the top to finish. The breadboard edge is making me nervous. I don't want to make any mistakes there. Keep your fingers crossed.

Still down in the basement...

Randy

Why I did not write.

2007-03-04T13:32:00.000-07:00

I've been away from the desk project and from posting for couple of weeks. We had a little excitement on the medical front this last week. My wife had a cancer test. And as it turned out she is fine. The doctor told her to come back in five years and they will check again. That means that she has by his estimate at least a 5 year shelf life. Where as I can't necessarily make that claim. She will out live me of that I am sure. Women live longer than men, any stand up comic will tell you, because after putting up with women men do not want to live any more. Bada-boom!

At any rate when we got through the test she is fine and off we go. The test took a year to schedule. That's right she booked it a full year ago. That is what they call the Alberta Heathcare Advantage. If there would have been a problem, by the time she got tested they could have found it in an autopsy. But one way or another they would have found it. The government's approach is that the autopsy is better because there are no repeat offenders and it frees up the hospital beds for those who are willing to pay. Conservative logic at its best. As you will have guessed I am no fan of our current right wing government. But what can we do when the majority elects a premier because he's a lush and that "makes him one of the guys!".
Enough politics.

I took a break from the desk just to get through the wife's test and because I was having a few problems that I had to resolve. They are done and now it is time to get back at it. The problems had to do with he trim for the pedestal base. I milled up the the stock I needed then when I went to mitre it one of the pieces chipped and there I was short of materiel. Then when I went to cut the "feet" my jig saw which was never a good one (I have had trouble with that thing since day one) failed me again. I may be the problem but I swear the tool hates me too. At any rate now I was short two pieces. I have purchased the stock again and I just have to re mill it. I also decided that I don't need to make the cut outs in the base trim as I found a system of adjustable feet that I can install under the pedestal if I need to later. The problem with the desk not sitting level will not be a problem because for now it will be set up on carpet which is self leveling more or less.

So now that I don't have to do anything fancy I am ready to start again except that this week was housekeeping. Cleaning the house took a half a day, we lost a day to the regular weekend errands and so it goes. Then there was another couple of hours going from one hardware store to another looking for stain and varathane, (Home Depot dropped the ball again being sold out of the stain I wanted, and only the color I wanted, so I went with their evil twin RONA). I don't even wonder any more why the progress is so slow I know that it is always two steps forward and one step back.

Finally when I went to write this post I could not get connected to the net. Telus was dropping the ball. I had to disconnect the whole system, modem, router, firewall and reconnect then it worked. It was not Telus's problem even though "they were experiencing a high volume of calls" . I guess when my router which regularly works fine decides to pack it in, it up and calls all it's buddies so everyone can have a router failure at the same time. I think that since the system started working on its own half way through Telus debugging the problem it must have been my equipment...NOT. It certainly would not have been their network. If you don't believe me just ask them.

Making less progress than I had intended...

Randy

Long Awaited Pictures

2007-02-18T17:13:00.000-07:00

Well finally as promised some pictures of the desk. It is starting to resemble something...but what? I finished the basic pedestals this week so I thought I would set it up to get an idea of the size. Yes sir it come in on the huge side. Oh well.

The pedestals are made of the mahogany frames and the birch panels. They look a lot lighter than the frame but they will take stain much more than the mahogany. The bottom and tops are plywood trimmed in mahogany at the top. The backs of the pedestals are open to allow heat to escape. When the old computer is slaving away over taxes it gets a little hot under the collar.

These are the drawers and shelves. I have to attach the slides and install them. There are 3 small shelves for the computer scanner and CD's a large drawer with attached shelf for the printer (paper storage underneath. And two large drawers for pens pencils and junk. I think they will become a fabulous junk repository . We already have a junk drawer but now we have room for expansion. Junk is like air it expands to fill the space available. Make more space and more junk will appear.

There is not much left of the mahogany parts just the glued up doors shown here, the keyboard shelf and some trim pieces.
Not much to show for a van load of wood just over a month ago.

And in a few weeks there will be less than that

And here is one tired helper. She even brought her helper hat with her. But it is not for wearing it is for chewing on.

Still busy making sawdust...

Randy

Thanks and No thanks

2007-02-11T18:33:00.000-07:00

Still working on the desk, almost to the point where I have something worth taking a picture of. I have the panels for the pedestal sides done up and I made the drawers up today. I will post some pictures when I have the pedestals made up.

I took the desk top in to a wood working shop, Black Forest Woods. They took my rough top and trimmed it to size on their big industrial table saw. What took them 15 minutes would have been an all day chore for me with poorer results. They did a wonderful job. Thanks Black Forest. Check them out. They specialize in custom built doors, exotic hardwoods and wood working tools. http://www.blackforestwood.com

As it turned out the real all day chore was shopping around to find the drawer glides. There are two big name hardware chains in town, Rona and Home Depot. Both big impersonal box stores who amazingly sell exactly the same stuff for... wait for it... the same price, and as it turns out were sold out of the same things. I ended up going to three stores fighting traffic all the way only to come home still short of all the parts I needed. And because of the labor market here only one of the several staff members was knowledgeable. What we heard most was "Sorry I don't know I just started." You would think that they would have experienced staff in on the weekend when they are the busiest. But I guess they figure they have a captive audience. No thanks to Rona and Home depot you dropped the ball yesterday.

I got the rest of the parts cut out of the famous 5X5 sheets of plywood. I owe thanks on that to my friend Glenn who loaned me his out feed stands. I put one beside the table saw and the other on the out feed end. It was like having another pair of hands. Thanks Glenn.

And finally I got my father in law's radial arm saw up and working. There are a few things on this project that are just best done with a radial arm saw. He gave it to me three years ago and I had not got around to setting it up. But as I will be needing it it was time. And conveniently my nephew Robert was in town from Winnipeg visiting his cousin Scott. Since the saw originally belonged to their grandfather I asked them over to help set it up. It didn't hurt that they are both big guys, six foot or better, rugby and soccer players, so a little old saw was no challenge to them. We had it up in about a half an hour and adjusted just in time for some celebratory beers. (They are of legal age .) Well Robert had a couple and I had a couple and Scott had to drive so he lost out but I sent a couple home with him for later. Thanks Scott and Robert I appreciate the help and the visit.

And since I had a couple this afternoon I thought it might be a good idea to stay away from the power tools tonight thank you!

Ready to watch The New Yankee Workshop through the eyelids...
Randy

The Desk Project Part - Next in Sequence

2007-02-04T16:55:00.000-07:00

Remember a post or two back when I said that 5 x5 is an unwieldy size for wood. Well I say it again. It was a royal pain to cut up a 1/4 inch sheet at that size. Once I had it in strips it was ok but man what a chore. I've got the 1/2 inch sheet to fight with next weekend. Maybe I will get Windsor or Black Forest Wood to do the major cuts down to something I can manage. I' ll see what it costs.

We milled up all the solid mahogany for the pedestals. I missed cutting a tenon on one of the styles so I will have to set up again to do it. Missing one is better than cutting an extra one believe me. It wasn't even that tough once it was set up I just milled all the pieces. The next time I have to do that is for the drawers and shelves. Once the parts are milled assembly is easy.

I dry fitted one of the side panels this afternoon. It looks good. The Birch panels in the mahogany frames don't even look too bad I think with stain they will be alright. Speaking of stains I managed to pinch my thumb in the fence on the table saw. A relatively minor injury considering the damage one could do with a table saw. But I ended up getting blood on the panels. I think if it had bled enough it would have darkened the birch to a deep mahogany. Nah not going to go there. Could be all those CSI shows my wife watches are having an effect on me. I don't mind her watching that but I wonder what she does with all the notes she takes? I'm worth more dead than alive should I be worried?

The Black Forest Woods Company, where I had planned to get the top cut to size was moving equipment this weekend so I did not get that done. A job for next week I guess. I might even get them to size up the other glued up sections and if it doesn't take too long power sand the front doors we will see how it goes.

Well that's it for now. I wonder where she keeps all those notes.

Sleeping with one eye open...

Randy

The Desk Adventure Continues

2007-01-28T14:21:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update on the desk project. I have rough cut all the solid Mahogany pieces and we glued up the top today. This desk is going to be huge. 34 by 62 inches does not seem like much until you see the panels nearly 3 foot by 5 foot plus that is big. Oh well to late to whine now.

The top took a lot of fussing and planing and measuring but it is almost ready to go. I think the piece will be too big to trim to size on on my table saw but there is a place in town where I think I can get it machined to size for not too dear a price. They have a large industrial table saw so it should work out better with their help. After that I should be able to handle everything else on my own.

The top has been glued up in two pieces. When they dry tonight I will biscuit join the two halves together to make the whole. I had to go out yesterday and get a couple more bar clamps long enough for the whole top. I thought that I could do the whole thing in one go but no chance. Norm said to do it in two pieces and its the only way. Remember I thought Oak would have been too heavy. Well that mahogany tips the scales pretty well too if the top pieces are any indication. This will be a solid piece of furniture if you measure by weight.

We dragged the last of the full dimension lumber in. Four sheets of 5' by 5' plywood. That is just about the most awkward size of wood I have ever encountered. It is just a little too big to get a grip on and it doesn't fit well going down stairs and turning it is of no help whatever. I'll bet it was an engineer determined that that was an optimal size they just love to mess with things.

Just sitting here watch'n the glue dry...

Randy

My Mentor

2007-01-27T06:51:00.000-07:00

I could learn a lot from my dog.

Maybe its just the breed but Belle is a genuinely happy creature. She does not seem to get upset or down. Everything is as it should be. She goes with the flow. That is probably because she doesn't know any better and has no sense of the future and little memory of the past except where food is concerned. On Maslow's scale she is living in and for the physical needs and those are all met. So she is absolutely happy.

But it is more than that. She really wants to make everyone around her happy too. If you pretend to be depressed or sad she will bring you her toys. A soggy stinky chew toy with the stuffing coming out may not be your idea of fun but it sure is hers. How can you be down with great stuff like that to play with and a friend who is more than willing to play with you in the mix.

When there is nothing going on she naps no need for entertainment. The trainer in her class calls it a default down. When there is nothing going on the dog learns to lie down calmly. Well she does that but some times she goes well past a calm lie down and sprawls as far as a small beagle can and naps. The theory being, I'm guessing, that someone will wake her or make noise when the action starts again. And again she is perfectly happy.

She hasn't a mean streak in her make up. She is not possessive about food or toys. She will forget herself and get rough but that is just playing. If she thinks she has hurt you she will back off and be more gentle.

The only thing that brings her down is if she does something wrong and gets scolded or punished for it. Scolding is as good as punishment because she seems to be hurt when she thinks she has not been good. And she will do whatever she can think of to get back in your good books. Physical punishment just makes her scared of you. And if she does get in trouble all is forgotten and forgiven in ten minutes or less. She does not forget what she did wrong she does learn, slowly some times, but she forgets or forgives you for being angry with her.

She's not perfect there are things she does that she shouldn't and we are working on those but, yep, I could learn a lot from my dog.

Randy

Computer Desk Continues

2007-01-20T07:08:00.000-07:00

Well I got the shop cleaned out and it was not as onerous as I expected. It was a lot of little stuff all over the place. But then I have always believed in a place for everything and everything all over the place. Dad's old jointer (and the term is jointer no matter what this spell checker says) is up and running. It works just fine. I will have to make up some feather boards for it and my table saw but that will only take a few minutes.

I spent one entire evening last week going through the cut list and making up a checklist just to make following the plan easier. There is so much to think about that seemed to be the only way to keep it straight. I also don't want to scribble all over the plan because I may want to reuse it or loan it out to someone. My friend Glenn at work is quite interested in seeing how this turns out.

The plan for today is to bring in the lumber from the garage and get all the rough cuts done. Then comes the fiddly part making the parts cutting dadoes rabbets, tenons all the stuff Norm makes look so easy. It's fiddly because you have to do the set up, then test the cuts and fit, re set up and on and on. (Also not shown in Norm's half hour show too many garage words probably.) Norm shows you that it is done because he will usually show the last test where everything fits, and there is no need for garage words. Depending on how far I get today there may be a second post of this scintillating story tomorrow. I know you can hardly contain yourself. If things go well there might even be pictures but that is a big might.

Well I have a busy day ahead so that's it for now.

Randy

Computer Desk Part Deux

2007-01-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

Well I took the plunge on my project. As it turns out I should have made the desk as soon as I got the plans it would have been cheaper by half. The reason I could not get Mahogany last time out was the Tsunami two years ago. It virtually wiped out the supply. Yesterday I was able to get it but it was costly. Nearly a thousand dollars for all the wood. When I priced it out originally it would have cost about 600 bucks. So apparently procrastination has a price.

The idea of using Pine went out the window when I saw what they had in that department. There was wood, lots of it, full of holes and so twisted and warped that it wold have cost 3 times the price just to get enough straight stuff. I also looked at oak. It was cheaper than mahogany but I only have 2 x 10 joists in my house. I also like the look of Mahogany better. So that's my choice.

The next step is to set up and get Dad's old joiner working. It has to be nearly as old as me but I don't think it has that much mileage on it. He gave it to me when he was downsizing a lot of years back. Since they have downsized one more time since then I really should get it set up and running properly. So that is the task for the week, clean out the shop and get the joiner working. (Ok maybe clean out the shop is the job for the week. Getting the joiner working might be next week.)

I reviewed the tape of the New Yankee workshop where Norm made the desk. He skips over some parts where the plans are a bit unclear. It is like he is saying "You should know how to do this if you are any kind of wood worker at all". But I re-read the plan for the 500 th time and I think I can understand it now.

Heart Pine is recycled old growth pine which is why I couldn't find it at the local Totem Lumber store. The reason Norm has a zillion bucks worth of tools is a) because PBS buys them for him and b) he needs them to dress recycled lumber and c) to make everyone who watches him jealous. The reason he can finish a project like this in half an hour is because he has a zillion bucks worth of tools. Take his big industrial belt sander, he was able to surface sand the entire desk top in one pass. He did say that it could also be done with a belt sander and a random orbital sander but it would take longer. Yeah right, he left out the part where it would take more "garage words" too. Oh, "garage words" a term coined by my Aunt. Her husband is a an old car buff and when he is working on them and the wrench slips off the nut he will sometimes use what my Aunt calls "garage words". I don't think I need to provide examples.

That's all I know for sure today. I will keep you posted.

Randy

Computer Desk

2007-01-06T07:15:00.000-07:00

I have had a project in mind for some time now. It is a computer desk. Looking around my workspace here I think it is time I did more than think about it.

The desk is a New Yankee Workshop project. Norm's plan call for the creation of a pedestal desk in which the components CPU, Printer fit inside the pedestals. There is space for paper storage cable runs across the back etc. All that you see is the monitor. The keyboard and mouse fit in a false drawer, there are drawers for storage of... well junk really. There are hidden drawers for CD or DVD storage (and probably more junk). All and all a very nice design.

My workspace looks like the dog's breakfast, and she would have to be terribly hungry at that. I have cables everywhere, equipment scattered here and there, filing on top of that and well you get the idea. But my desk is really not much more than a table with one small file drawer. So I can be forgiven. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

I have made a few tries at this project before but have not had much luck. The last time I went looking for wood for it there was nothing available in Mahogany which is what I wanted to use. The plans call for Heart Pine which is impossible to find here. I will try to find something in pine or fir this time and maybe I will have better luck. Those woods are pretty soft so I may have to modify the plan to address that problem. Also the original plan is for a tower. I will have to rework the measurements to handle a desktop. I also have a scanner that will have to be accommodated some how. A few little modifications here and there. Hey that's why they call it a plan, it's not carved in stone, there are always solutions to every problem.

If I can find suitable lumber I should be able to find the rest of the hardware I need at Lee Valley Tools. (Actually it is just a great excuse for going over to Lee Valley). Should I get this project underway after a couple of false starts now, I will let you all watch my progress here.

Building the desk will be one thing getting all this mess cleaned up to move it into new digs will be a project on its own.

The New Yankee web site is http://www.newyankee.com/
The Lee Valley tool web site is http://www.leevalley.com/
Check them out they are pretty good woodworking and hardware sites.

Now where did I put the furniture polish?

Randy

New Years

2006-12-31T07:35:00.000-07:00

New Year's Eve. A time for looking back and for looking forward. I guess we will continue our new New Year's tradition. For the past few years now we don't wait up till midnight. Oh yeah we watched the new millennium roll in, it was after all Y2K and I am in the IT business, but that was a requirement. And we stayed up for 2001 just in case the new millennium technically started then, and it would be a few years until a person could do that again. But after that it did not seem so important to see the New Year in.

We're not party types. In fact we are early risers so partying late is definitely against the grain. If you are not out partying it up let's face it in the 500 channel universe there is really nothing on New Year's Eve. They assume that everyone is out not home watching TV.

I enjoyed the new year's parties we went to don't get me wrong, some of my fondest memories were from new years parties. I remember dad going to a party at the town hall in Holdfast. He was going to do the "old waltzeroo" and if falling on the ice in the main intersection of town was the old waltzeroo he did. And speaking of dancing I remember Nancy starting a conga line when the DJ played "Locomotion" at the hall in Erinwoods. That was practically a rite of passage as everyone got in on the train.

Then there was the year that two friends of ours resolved not to dis each other. The resolution was made mere minutes before midnight. This couple Jerry and Pinky could not be in the same room without putting each other down. And it was a battle royal of one-ups-man-ship to watch after that. But having had a few they decided that it was a rather poor way to get along so they resolved to stop it. They got their last digs in just seconds before midnight then the truce began. Then the "compliments" began some that could be interpreted as no quite complimentary. Then the first insult struck. "Way to go Pinky, that resolution lasted a whole 6 minutes" and the resolution were over and everything was back to normal.

So unless it is an important year, our new tradition is to get a good night's sleep so rather than forcing a late night. And what a good tradition it is. The new year looks much better a few hours later when you are rested. It is not so dark and God willing not so cold. And all the drunk people are at home an not on the road. It is so peaceful and quiet. A relaxing breakfast and the year is off to a grand start. Yep I like our new tradition. And since we have Belle now and it is her habit to get her last walk at 8:30 and be off to bed by 9:30 (so she will be ready for her first walk at 5:00AM) we might as well join her.

Happy New Year!
Randy

Christmas Eve

2006-12-24T07:18:00.000-07:00

Merry Christmas,

This is my dog. Beagles always remind me of Christmas because of "A Charlie Brown Christmas". Can't you just picture Snoopy dancing on that piano or decorating his dog house.

This is my first post. I don't promise to be adding to this everyday or that I will have any miarculous insights but I may have an opinion or two or a comment here and there that you will find intersting or maybe amusing. Stop by from time to time

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Randy